


Into That Good Night

by LavenderProse



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Character Death, Falling In Love, Fictional Technology, Heaven, M/M, Mentions of terminal illness, Non-Canonical Ages, Religious Undertones, san junipero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-02-26 02:17:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 36,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13226079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LavenderProse/pseuds/LavenderProse
Summary: "What was it like?" Yuuri asks. The scrape of his skates is slow and gentle on the ice, and Viktor looks up to watch him come near. He stops inches away, eyes fixed on the stands. "To be in front of thousands of people? To hear them shouting your name?"Viktor looks at him, this beautiful man he's somehow found on the other side of the world in a town that doesn't exist, and says, "It was marvelous."Viktor Nikiforov has neglected life and love for over seventy years. Fighting a losing battle with illness, he takes up residence in what is known as a twilight town. In a city on the sea built of dreams and memories, he meets another dying man.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> IT IS FINALLY HERE. I've been teasing this on my Tumblr for about six months. My apologies to my followers who have been waiting for so long. I hope it lives up to your expectations. 
> 
> This story will deal with themes that are incredibly personal to me, and are subjects that many people find it hard to talk about. It represents a ten-month-long creative process and somewhere in the area of 1500 hours spent writing, editing, and plotting. I am actually still not done writing it, but the first chapter has been as perfected as I'm capable of making it with my current abilities. 
> 
> Please enjoy, and read with care, and know that I love you for clicking on this and giving me the chance to put something like this into your heart. I care for you. This story is my gift to a community that helped me through one of the darkest times in my life. I hope it honors that sentiment.

He's dropped in the middle of a seaside twilight town, gulls cawing overhead and a fisherman casting his line out into the surf. His shoes are getting sandy; his hair is whipping back and forth in the warm breeze. It's mid-April, his favorite time of year. When there's just the barest chill in the air, and the days are just as long as the nights. He remembers his childhood, many years ago, waiting for the days to lengthen in the winter and shorten in the summer. Always either no sun or too much in Saint Petersburg.

As expected, night is beginning to fall. He shuffles away from the beach and onto a boardwalk area, which is beginning to fill with nightlife. Young people streaming to and fro, buying roasted meat and salty snacks and fruity drinks. He wanders past all of them, not seeing anything that particularly grabs his attention.

He, on the other hand, seems to be grabbing the attention of many locals. It isn't surprising, considering this is a Japanese destination and his silver hair and austere European features are decidedly non-Japanese. He was told before he came here that he might get strange looks; that locals could sometimes be unfriendly towards foreigners, but he's beginning to think that that was bias. The looks aren't unfriendly; just curious. Most people choose twilight towns that are familiar to them. Places where they grew up, or spent a great deal of time.

It would have been easy to choose some Russian town, where the people looked like him and shared his culture. But he didn't see the point of leaving Saint Petersburg if he was going to go to a place exactly like Saint Petersburg.

He's always wanted to go to Japan. He may have been, once or twice, but he isn't sure. His years of competing blur together until his memories are of nothing but ice and crowds and music flowing from rafters.

His wandering takes him away from the main heart of the town, away from the bars and clubs. He passes food stands closed for the day, grocery stores, a movie theatre and even a small art gallery. Whatever it is that people want to do, he supposes, they do. Some people just want to continue their daily lives exactly as they were. Some want to do things they never could.

Viktor isn't sure what he wants.

He wanders for perhaps a mile, finding his way into a residential neighborhood. It's built into the side of a hill, with houses leaning into it all the way up, stone walkways, trees and grass looking more blue than green in the dim light of dusk. There is something charmingly previous-century about it. The houses give way to a river, which he crosses on a footbridge, and then an open-air market where people are offering fragrant food and interesting clothing. He sees a tiger print shirt and thinks of a face from long ago.

Through none of this does he have any idea where he's going, until he does. He may be in a foreign country, and 20th century Japanese architecture is as opaque as it is beautiful, but he will always recognize an ice rink when he sees one. He makes his way up the stairs to the front door—there is no one immediately visible, but the door is unlocked and there aren't any hours listed on the door. It would be odd if there were; closing times aren't really a thing in places like this. He goes in.

There is a skate rental desk immediately within the building, which is manned by a young woman, likely a mere impression given the fact that most functional roles in these places aren't done by real people. There is a friendly and airy expression on her face; as he approaches, she tilts her head and some of her brown fringe falls into her eyes. "Hello, sir. Can I help you?"

"Can I…?" He gestures into the rink, where the lights are on and the ice calls to him.

She smiles. "Of course. Do you need skates?"

"No," he says, nodding to her in thanks before making his way through the doors. He's been told that some people prefer to go through the motions of actually putting clothing on; they want to treat this place like an extension of where they came from, continue the status quo. Life as always. Viktor has no such qualms. By the time he reaches the boards, there is a pair of skates on his feet, perfectly snug and broken in. The blades are golden; the flag of Russia stands out proudly on the heel. It's been years, but he'll never forget these skates.

It is then that he notices there is someone on the ice. A lone figure in blue, black hair whipping as he executes a perfect Ina Bauer, arms outstretched. He's enticed to watch for a few moments, as the man in blue curves into a camel spin, crosses over, crosses over, arches across the ice in a spread eagle and then launches himself into the air in a triple Axel.

"Is this a closed practice?" he calls jokingly across the ice. The man in blue startles violently and skids out, hitting the boards and going down with a crash. In less than a second, Viktor is across the rink. It doesn't seem to matter that it's been years since he was on the ice; it comes back to him as naturally as walking would. They told him that's how it was. That people who'd been bedridden for two years were able to walk and run again without Physio; that people whose knees hadn't let them ride bikes in two decades were able to cycle cross-country.

It's been twelve years since the hip surgery that took skating permanently out of Viktor's life. Here, now, gliding across the ice, it feels like a distant memory. Nothing hurts.

"Are you okay?" he asks of the man in blue, turning into a hockey stop. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. I honestly thought you'd seen me come in; I wasn't very quiet about it."

"I'm fine," he says, bracing himself on the boards and levering himself up. Viktor grabs his hand and helps him, marveling at his own strength. He'd forgotten what it was like to be twenty-something, hale and hearty. The two of them easily get the man in blue back on his skates, and only a light blush on his cheeks shows any indication that he's been injured by the experience; and even then, it's only his pride. He brushes slush off his knees and looks up, offering Viktor a sheepish smile. "I'm sorry, it's just…I'm usually the only one here. Except for Yuuko, and she's…"

"An impression," Viktor says, nodding. "I assumed as much.” He holds out a hand, now wrapped in a black cotton glove despite his having arrived here in nothing but a pants and shirt. "Viktor Nikiforov."

"Yuuri Katsuki," comes the reply, and a handshake along with it. He bows slightly as they shake hands, and Viktor does as well; two cultures, blending. When they straighten back up, Yuuri lifts an eyebrow. "First time in Hasetsu or first time _here_?"

"Both," Viktor says. "I was just imported today. They have me on a trial run, because I'm…" He shrugs, unsure how to say it. "Let's just say that there's not much time left. So I'm here for one night, once a week. What about you? Are you…?"

Yuuri smiles, shakes his head. "No, no. Just a visitor. Like you." He slides his way past Viktor, spins with his hands up. "So, Viktor…why do I feel like I've heard your name?"

"Are you a figure skater?" Viktor chuckles, throwing a leg out to anchor himself, turning himself with the other to follow Yuuri as he starts a figure with Viktor in the middle.

"What do you think?" He changes direction in front of Viktor, turning around to flash a look from under his fringe. His eyes are brown; warm cinnamon.

"I think that if you're not, you should be." Yuuri laughs at that, pushing off into another circle. A bracket figure, Viktor thinks, but he could be wrong. Compulsory figures were long gone by the time Viktor began training for the international stage. How much older must Yuuri be than him, to be familiar with them? "I was five-time world champion, eight time Russian champion. For awhile, they used to call a quadruple flip a Nikiforov. I've been told that the term has fallen out of use, but it was a massive ego boost while it was around." Yuuri turns around again, toe pointed perfectly, smiling. Viktor feels his own smile slide slightly. "But that was a long time ago."

"Or maybe not," Yuuri says. He's far away now, tracing a third and final circle. Not a bracket figure. "Around here, it's only as long ago as you want it to be."

"What language are you speaking?" Viktor asks, finally bothered enough by the dissonance between the shapes Yuuri's mouth is making and the words that he is hearing to ask. He hears everything in Russian, his mother tongue, but because each person is an entity unto themselves—this system, apparently, wouldn't work any other way—it's only what he hears, not what is actually coming out of Yuuri's mouth. "Sorry—the bad dubbing is getting to me."

"Japanese," Yuuri says, with a slight lilt to his voice as if it should be obvious. Perhaps it should, them being in Japan. "And you're speaking Russian, right?"

"Yes," he says, surprised. "You…speak it?"

Yuuri laughs, and when he speaks next, it's in English, and his voice sounds somehow clearer. He speaks with an American accent and, because it's a language Viktor is fluent in, the system doesn’t translate it. It's Yuuri's words, coming at him verbatim. "Not as well as I speak English."

Viktor feels a fascinated little smile settle onto his face. "English is fine."

Yuuri, going backwards as he finishes tracing his figure, smiles prettily at Viktor over his shoulder and says, "Well, the rink is big enough for the two of us," then pushes off towards the right side of the rink. Across the cavernous space, his tenor voice echoes. "It might be fun to not feel like the only person in the world. If you want music, there's a sound system. All you have to do is think." He starts a series of crossovers, gaining speed for a Y-spin. Viktor watches him, fascinated, and only after Yuuri skates over to the boards for water does he make his feet move.

It's odd, to be skating again. Without the pain that had stained it the last few years he could do it, without the restrictions that his doctor put on him—don't go too fast, no spins, _absolutely no jumps_. It was completely watered down to the point where all he was allowed to do was skate in slow circles, but at least he could still _do it_. Even that was taken away from him, eventually.

Now he gathers speed, crossover-crossover like Yuuri seems fond of doing, and launches himself into a flip.

He falls, and it hurts, but it's been literal decades since he felt so fucking _alive_.

"Are you okay?" Yuuri asks from the other side of the rink, pick toed into the ice, calf defined with it. He's wearing legwarmers, which is a style that has come back again in recent years, now enjoying popularity with all genders. Fashion is so much less binary than it was when Viktor was a young man.

(When Yuuri was a young man? He doesn't know.)

"Fine!" Viktor pushes himself up off the ice and winds up into another jump. This one he two-foots, but stays upright. He flashes a grin back at Yuuri. "Never better."

"Maybe you should turn your pain sensor off until you've got the hang of it again," Yuuri says, and Viktor simply laughs, winding up to try again.

For the three hours that Viktor has left before his time is up, he and Yuuri skate a perimeter around each other. Contrary to Yuuri's advice, he doesn't turn off his pain sensor. He wants to feel it. The impact of his feet against the ice, the scrape of his hand when he touches down on a jump, the burn of the cool air in his lungs. He can almost pretend, like this.

At two minutes to midnight, he skates out into the middle of the rink, spinning around slowly, staring up at the bleachers. It's a small rink, a local one that might only be able to seat a few hundred, but a few hundred is a bigger crowd than he's been in front of in forty years.

"What was it like?" Yuuri asks. The scrape of his skates is slow and gentle on the ice, and Viktor looks up to watch him come near. He stops with his toe picks only a few inches away from Viktor's, eyes fixed on the stands as well. "To be in front of thousands of people? To hear them shouting your name?"

Viktor looks at him, this beautiful man he's somehow found on the other side of the world in a town that doesn't exist, and as it all goes dark says, "It was marvelous."

* * *

He asks them to deliver him closer to the rink the following week, when he's allowed to go again. They do, but he doesn't immediately go there. Instead, he wanders towards another building that piqued his interest that first time—a quant-looking home with a view of the water and signs out front, inviting curious visitors to take a tour. The words are welcoming, and in Russian even though he's sure most others see them in Japanese.

The person who greets him is another impression—well-dressed and friendly, and just a little uncanny in the way impressions usually are. Viktor asks them many questions, which they answer easily, being as they are a physical manifestation of the mainframe—or so Viktor's given to understand.

"So how does this work?" Viktor asks eventually, still standing on the front porch. "Do I have to—I don't know, bid on it? Make a down payment?"

The impression chuckles. "No, Mr. Nikiforov. The exchange of currency isn't a feature of the twilight system, except where it would be more complicated to work around it—vending machines, for example. But should you ever need a coin, I think you'll find it right in your pocket." They turn towards the door to the house, and say, "All you have to do to make this house yours is fill it with a memory. Where were you happiest? It can be your childhood home, or the home of a good friend. Perhaps the suite where you spent your honeymoon. All it takes is a memory."

"That's all it takes?" Viktor asks doubtfully. "What about others who might want the same house?"

"They can have it, too. It isn't a problem for multiple people to occupy the same space without overlapping. We have billions of terabytes of storage space in Hasetsu, only a fraction of it occupied. Don't concern yourself, Mr. Nikiforov. It's unlikely that we will ever reach a point where space becomes an issue." They tilt their head towards the door, smiling kindly. "Do you have a memory?"

"Um…just a moment." Viktor closes his eyes, dipping his head and trying to bring something to mind. Where was he happiest? Certainly not in his childhood home, and certainly not in the one he occupied in the most immediate past. There must have been something in the middle, something better. He never married, and the memory of most of his past lovers leaves a cottony, sour taste in his mouth.

For a moment, he considers Christophe's Zurich flat, the one he spent four whole weeks in the year he turned twenty-two, hardly getting dressed unless it was to put on a swimsuit. The memory is a happy one; Chris had been one of his great friends. But it feels wrong. Chris had gone on to get married and live with his husband in that flat, and they're buried together somewhere outside of Bern. Both of them are at some Swiss destination now, and Viktor supposes he could visit if he wanted to. He knows that if he did, it would likely be that exact flat they were living in—and the thought drives him to shove it away.

"Sorry, this is taking longer than I thought it would," Viktor mumbles, eyes still closed.

"Take your time," says the impression. "We're not in a rush."

He remembers that he, himself, bought a condo that same year with the check from his first big sponsorship. It had been somewhat small, but beautiful. Warm and open, with light streaming in through big windows in every direction. In the morning, when the bridges were going down and Saint Petersburg was waking up, he would hear the gulls cry and the tugboats bleat and feel truly content. It was the first space he could call his; it was his escape from under the thumb of his mother and the well-meaning but sometimes scathing critique of his coach.

When he opens his eyes, the impression opens the door. Viktor steps in and is instantly overcome—not only because it looks exactly as he remembers, right down to the afghan thrown over the back of the couch and his mother's Matryoshka dolls lined up on the mantel, but because of what hops off the couch and runs towards him.

"Makkachin," he breathes, and collapses hard onto his knees to bury his face in warm brown fur. He hasn't seen his dog in over forty years. There had been others, of course, since. Viktor had loved them with all his heart. But this is Makkachin. This is his darling baby boy. He looks up at the impression, tears welling under his eyes. "Is this a trick? Is he real?"

"He's as real as you," they say, smiling. Viktor was always taught that when technology achieved the ability to speak for itself, to act in human-like patterns, that the human race was doomed; that said technology would turn on them at once and establish itself as the new master race. Fear mongering, is what he realizes that to be now. This technology, at least, is friendly. "Your memories must have brought him into form—and the body that you inhabit in this place is the same. Memories."

"Am I allowed to keep him?" Viktor asks, watching his beloved poodle fall onto his back and wait patiently for his belly to be rubbed. This Makkachin could not be more than two years old, still practically a puppy. He remembers the last painful year of the real Makkachin, watching him laboriously crawl up the stairs of the condo after walks, arthritis too much for him to cope with at times. One day, he couldn't make it. Viktor had picked him up and carried him all the way to the vet. When he returned, it was with only a leash and collar.

"Of course." The impression leans down to pat Makkachin's head. "He won't exist when you aren't on the server, but once you're uploaded permanently—"

"I understand," Viktor says, clearing his throat. He makes himself turn his head, look up and smile. "Thank you. I was wondering if I could be alone?"

"Of course," says the impression, and lets themselves out.

Viktor lowers himself totally onto the ground with his dog, cuddling him in the cradle of his body like he remembers doing as a boy of fifteen or sixteen, when this century was new and he had his entire life ahead of him.

"Hello my darling," he coos to Makkachin, patting down the curls on his head. "Hello my baby, my good puppy, my sweet boy."

Makkachin licks his face and tucks his muzzle under Viktor's chin. He stays there for quite a while, adoring his dog and examining him for any inconsistencies—he still isn't sure how confident he is in this technology. But it looks real, it feels real. The gentle noise of air through the windows sounds real. Makkachin's clean fur smells real.

When he was born, nobody knew what happened after you died. They still don't—but they've found a way to take the uncertainty away, somehow. Viktor still isn't sure how to feel about it. His Orthodoxy has no explanation for this place.

Eventually, Viktor rises from the floor. All at once, there is a leash in his hand and a collar on Makkachin's neck. It's getting on towards midnight, and he doesn't want to spend all of the five hours he has here on the floor, no matter how tickled he is by the fact that he can lay on the floor all he wants and not worry about how he's going to get back up. His hip doesn't even twinge, not one bit, even after half an hour lying on hardwood.

He and Makkachin make their way towards the ice rink. Makkachin, who was always a very well-behaved dog, bounds ahead of him a few dozen feet—the leash is long—but always returns to Viktor's side eventually. He wonders at that. Somehow, Makkachin is his own entity despite being formed from Viktor's memories. He isn't sure how all of this works. Before coming here the first time, he was worried about it being uncanny—too quiet, too sterile, too empty. Not enough smells or sound to make it feel tangible. He's discovered that the night here feels exactly like any other. He passes the occasional local, Makkachin barks at the occasional small animal. The wind whips his hair. He can hear the rustle of leaves, the sound of distant chatter from inside houses and the crowds further down the river. It doesn't feel fake, or like walking in a dream.

Yuuko is behind the desk again when he arrives. Her hair is up today, the majority of it underneath a brightly colored knit cap. He's less put off by her airy non-humanity than he was previously.

God's angels weren't human either.

"Back again," Yuuko says, leaning against the desk. Viktor leans against the other side, and Makkachin reaches up his front paws to set them on the counter. Yuuko makes a happy sound and pats his curls. "Aw, who's this?"

"Makkachin," he answers, smiling as Makkachin happily noses at her palm. Perhaps this memory-Makkachin is more influenced by Viktor's mind than he realized. The Makkachin of his youth would not have, in all likelihood, displayed such almost-human behavior. Surprisingly, Viktor isn't bothered by it. It's not necessarily uncharacteristic—if Makkachin had had the ability to realize that there was a person who would pet him on the other side of the counter, he absolutely would have found a way to receive that affection.

"A very special boy," Yuuko says softly, with a tone somewhat unbefitting of the conversation, and Viktor is abruptly reminded that the impressions are equipped with any knowledge they need to access to make visitors and residents comfortable and happy.

"He is," Viktor says softly. Then, in a not completely unrelated vein, asks her, "Is Yuuri here, by any chance?"

Yuuko smiles and nods towards the rink. "Oh, yes. He always is. I don't think he does very much other than this…but if it's what he wants to do, if it makes him content…I suppose that's all that can be asked for." When she looks back at him, her face is somehow sad. Viktor isn't sure if the impressions can feel emotion, but Yuuko seems to think she can, and maybe that's all it takes.

"Nobody else is ever here?" Viktor asks, frowning. He's never seen anybody else at the rink, but he thought it was just due to the late hour and the relative isolation of its location compared to the rest of town.

"Not that I've ever seen," Yuuko says. "But I think he likes it that way. I'm not sure I understand why he does this night after night when he could do anything he could ever dream of, but I don't think I'm supposed to."

"We humans are odd creatures," is what Viktor chooses to say after a long and contemplative pause.

Yuuko smiles and says, "Yes you are."

Viktor returns the smile and clicks his tongue for Makkachin, who drops his paws back to the ground and trots alongside Viktor through the doors of the rink. He looks to Makkachin and says, "Go lay on the bleachers, Makka," and is confident that Makkachin will understand and follow his directions. Indeed, his poodle trots away, hopping up along the bleachers with ease and settling at the topmost tier.

Only to make a swift and eager return when Yuuri comes to a halt next to the rink entrance, his tenor voice gone high and adoring with, "Oh my goodness, who is _this_?" when he sees Makkachin. Viktor laughs as Makka scrambles, practically jumping onto the ice with Yuuri in an effort to reach his held out hand.

"Makkachin," Viktor introduces. "He's…my dog. I hope you don't mind us crashing your practice again."

Yuuri laughs and squats, skates still on the ice but hands straining towards Makkachin on the other side of the threshold. "Well, I guess I'll tolerate you, but this _good boy_ can interrupt any time. Can't you? Yes, yes." Makkachin is now licking his face. When he looks up towards Viktor his nose and cheeks are shiny with slobber, but to look at him you would think it was exactly what he wanted. "I was wondering if you were going to come back today. It's been lonely the past week. Now that I've had some company, I seem to be finding myself…wanting it again." In the moment it takes him to straighten up, the dog slobber is gone from his face without a hand ever having touched it.

"Yuuko told me that you're here almost every night," Viktor says, hands in his coat pockets as he approaches the boards. Yuuri looks down to straighten his glove; Makkachin scales the bleachers again. "Nobody else is ever here?"

"I'm not sure many other people know it's here," Yuuri says softly, still looking at his gloves. "I, um, think I might have made this place? Accidentally? And there's a bigger rink further into town, where I think people play hockey. You're only the second person I've ever—ever seen here, aside from me." He turns and drifts away, skates gliding almost soundlessly along the ice. "It looks just like the rink I skated at in my childhood, you see. Before I moved to America to pursue my career."

"Is that where you are now?" Viktor asks, skates forming on his feet as he steps onto the ice. "America?"

"No," Yuuri says, but doesn't elaborate.

"They must be more lax about their regulations on the system, wherever you are," Viktor says, desperately trying to get Yuuri to tell him something, anything about himself. "Most visitors are only allowed on once a week, where I'm from. Any more than that and they start worrying about your ability to tell what's real and what isn't. Dissociating. That sort of thing."

"That's not…really a problem for me," Yuuri says softly. "I don't really have anything to confuse it with. When I'm not here, I'm…not anywhere."

That close to death? Viktor wants to ask, but knows that some people are sensitive about that topic. Viktor is one of them.

Yuuri turns around and skates backwards as Viktor continues forwards. He tilts his head to the side and asks Viktor, "Do you remember any of your old routines?"

Viktor grins. "Darling, I remember every routine I've ever choreographed." He taps his head. "I may not be much to look at nowadays, but my brain—that's a steel trap." For figure skating, anyway. He thinks he may have broken every promise he'd ever made to another human, but he's never forgotten a single step sequence.

"You seem like plenty to look at to me," Yuuri says softly. There is a blushing tenderness to his expression as he narrows his stride for Viktor to close in, the two of them now moving carefully within each other's space. Viktor never skated with a partner, and his only experience with tandem skating was teaching students their routines, but he imagines that this is similar to what ice dancers feel. Tuning your body in to the fine frequencies of another person, reading the subtle movements of their muscles to decode how you, yourself, should move. Yuuri settles into a glide, pushes his hair behind his ear and asks, "Would you show me?"

"One of my old routines?" Viktor asks.

"Yes."

Viktor considers this. There are hundreds to choose from; after retiring he'd made his living coaching and choreographing several consecutive generations of figure skaters. He took over Yakov's roster after his heart attack and then, after the man died and Viktor discovered he had been left _everything_ , moved into Yakov's house and built on a dormitory-style addition that could house ten students. Young skaters came from the world over to attend his 'school.' In the mornings, they got up before dawn and went straight to the rink. In the evenings, Viktor sat at the large dining room table with books, pens, pencils, laptops, tablets and ten students and made sure they were training their minds as surely as their bodies. It was a winning strategy; at one point, he had a National Champion from every continent on his roster.

Of course, he got old. He reached a point where teaching choreography was an impossibility, and like Yakov before him was forced to hand over the reins. But his love for the sport and for his art, the things he could express with his body and a pair of skates, never left him.

"Alright," Viktor says. "I think I have one."

Yuuri skates eagerly to the boards, which he lifts himself onto easily, skates thumping and leaving no mark. Viktor used to yell at his students for such a thing; but then, it's not as if Yuuri can hurt himself if he falls backwards.

Viktor skates out to the middle of the rink. Around him, the lights dim as he breathes deep. The opening strains of a song barely remembered start quiet on the speaker system; Viktor wasn't sure that there would be enough of it left in his mind for it to play, but it does. When he hears it, it's like a reflex; his body still knows this routine after so many years. It was a crowd favorite; his free skate for one of his last seasons and his gala skate from then until the day he retired. He thinks it had something to do with the sweeping, grand sound of the tenor's voice, singing a song that anyone could understand even with no Italian in their vocabulary.

What he never told anyone was that for some reason, one day, he sat down and choreographed a pairs routine to the duetto reprisal from later in the opera. It was an idle thing, probably something he did just to see if he _could_. It's one of those routines that has rattled around in his head, unused, for decades. He'd never coached a pairs team. He'd never had a reason to use it.

For some reason, as he performs this routine in front of a beautiful man in a world that doesn't exist, it's the only thing on his mind.

_Stammi vicino, non te ne andare…_

When he finally comes to a stop, arms folded over his chest and panting at the ceiling, lungs aching from the exertion—and isn't that odd? That lungs can hurt in a place like this—he realizes that he only has five minutes left.

Yuuri is skating over to him, blades quick on the ice. Viktor looks to him, and sees a still-wet tear stain on both cheeks.

"That was beautiful," Yuuri says softly, once he's within earshot. "I've never seen anything like it. Now I know why you were so famous."

Viktor hums a laugh and reaches out a hand to Yuuri's cheek, thumbs away the wetness there. Yuuri's breath stutters and Viktor murmurs, "I'm sorry it made you so sad."

"Not sad," Yuuri whispers. "Just…emotional. I cry when I'm emotional, it's something I've always done. I'm not sure why." He reaches up his own gloved thumb to swipe away the other tear. Viktor feels somehow cheated; he wanted to wipe away that one, too. “The song…It's about love, right?"

"All the best songs are," Viktor chuckles. Three minutes left. He drops his hand from Yuuri's face and slides a little closer, until he has to consciously tip his head down to meet Yuuri's eyes. " _Stay close to me, never let me go_."

Yuuri's eyes go wide, his breath hitching. A delicate and beautiful blush rises onto his cheeks.

"That's what the song says."

"O-oh, right." Yuuri's gaze stays on a point somewhere over Viktor's shoulder for a long moment until, with a deep breath and a straightening of his shoulders, he meets Viktor's eyes and murmurs, "Will you…teach it to me?"

Viktor feels surprise blanket him like an old friend. It's been awhile since another person has managed to genuinely take him aback. He enjoys it—the way Yuuri's expression manages to look sure and determined despite his body language telling a story of pure hesitance. Viktor can tell immediately that this is something Yuuri has been considering before just now; possibly, it's an idea he's been kicking around since the week previous, when they more or less fell randomly into each other's lives. Viktor likes the idea that he's been on Yuuri's mind the same way Yuuri and this place have been on Viktor's.

"I could," Viktor says slowly, after almost thirty seconds of contemplative silence. He half expected Yuuri to back up on his request, laugh it off or otherwise apologize for even having uttered it. Instead, Yuuri is quiet too, and lets Viktor have his moment. He's a nervous person, Viktor thinks, but he also seems to know what he wants. What he wants, it appears, are private lessons from a world champion whose name the world has forgotten. Viktor can't think himself someone to refuse such an earnest request. "But wouldn't you prefer to have something new? Something all yours?"

A chagrinned smile crawls onto Yuuri's face. "I've never been good at choreography."

"I wasn't implying that I wouldn't teach you," Viktor says, raising an eyebrow. "Only that I could give you something better than a forty-year-old program that the world's already seen."

The smile on Yuuri's face softens into something sweet, full of wonder, childlike. "It's hard to imagine anything more beautiful than what you just did."

"Really?" Viktor murmurs, a faint beeping starting in his ears. "Because I don't find it hard at all."

He reaches out and, with the pad of his thumb, just barely touches Yuuri's lower lip. Yuuri closes his eyes, dark lashes splaying elegantly on high cheeks, and Viktor watches his lips part just slightly in some nebulous emotion as the world blacks out around him.

* * *

Viktor arrives at the rink before Yuuri the following week. He sends Makkachin to the bleachers as he had before and skates a few warming laps around the perimeter of the rink. Every once in awhile, he'll catch a glimpse of himself in the reflective Plexiglas over the boards and immediately jerk his head away so hard that he almost unbalances himself on numerous occasions. He tends to avoid looking at himself when he's here, just because every time he does it's jolting. Here he is, twenty-six or twenty-seven with all his hair and no lines on his face. Here he is, standing at a full five-eleven with the perfect posture of a young man, the cut and musculature of an athlete at the top of his game. This is a version of himself that even he had forgotten.

He remembers thinking himself so old at this point in his life, figure skating's unwritten rule of retirement by thirty looming over him like a threat. What a stupid child he had been then.

Yuuri shows up soon enough, with a large skate bag slung over his shoulder. He's wearing a loose and very soft-looking heather blue cotton shirt and thick athletic leggings. He apologizes for being late and waves at Viktor before sitting down on the first row of bleachers to take off his shoes and tie on his skates. As he does so, Viktor comes to realize a few things.

One: Yuuri, like Viktor, probably has a "home" where he has come from. Tonight, when Viktor was uploaded, he found himself in the condo he'd created the previous week, in bed with Makkachin at his feet. It startled him, because it felt almost exactly like waking up. It makes him wonder what it will be like, if he chooses to stay here for good when the time comes. Will he sleep? Will he dream?

The second and significantly less distressing thought is brought into evidence by Yuuri's bag and the skates and jacket he pulls out of it. Yuuri is clearly one of those people who prefers to dress himself, prefers to have a wardrobe from which he chooses his clothing, to actually take them in his hands and pull them onto his body instead of thinking them into existence straight onto his back. Yuuri does everything exactly as he would if they were sitting in a real ice skating rink in the middle of real Japan, and Yuuri was a real person Viktor could reach out and really touch instead of thoughts and feelings uploaded to a mainframe from the brain of a man maybe thousands of miles away.

On second thought, perhaps it isn't less distressing to think about.

"I was thinking we would start with the music," Viktor says, coming to a stop beside the boards closest to Yuuri's seat as he pulls on his jacket and gloves. The jacket has holes for his thumbs to keep the sleeves from sliding up and baring sensitive arms to the unforgiving ice—he slides his gloved thumbs into those.

Watching him, Viktor holds onto the boards and dips himself into a split, deep as he can go with his eyes still over the boards. It's got more to do with habit, with having something to do with his body, than need. He never really feels tight here, not like he needs to loosen his muscles. Then again, it could just be that he's forgotten what it's like to have muscles that don't constantly ache. Even by this age in the real world, Viktor was suffering from painful knees and a persistent ache in his hip that would someday become his career-ender.

"That's fine," Yuuri says after a moment, seeming to have genuinely forgotten that Viktor's statement warranted a reply. He zips up his jacket, which like much of his wardrobe is blue and black. It is only when he reaches up to his face that Viktor realizes he is wearing a pair of thick-rimmed blue frames.

"You need glasses?" Viktor mumbles, straightening up from his stretch.

"Oh, yeah," Yuuri says as he removes them. "For, um, astigmatism. Contacts are really hard to find for that sort of thing, so I've just always worn glasses. Not when I'm skating, though—I've had them fly off my face in the middle of a spin before."

"But do you _need_ them?" Viktor asks again.

It takes a moment for the truth of what he's asking to dawn on Yuuri—when it does, his lips part slightly in an expression of recognition, and his eyes drop to his lap. He chews the inside of his cheek for a moment until he says, "I guess I don't. Not here. I didn't…well, I hadn't really considered it. This is how I see myself, I guess. I can barely remember a time before…" He shrugs and stands up, pushing his hair back in some nervous habit. "They make me feel…"

"Real?" Viktor asks quietly into the unfilled and expectant silence.

"Something like that," Yuuri agrees. There is a melancholy little smile on his face as he skates on and follows Viktor to center ice. It's gone by the time Viktor turns around to look at him again, but the memory of it remains for several long minutes.

Viktor slides himself around Yuuri, faces him with arms folded over his chest and legs folded one over the other. Yuuri shakes out his hands and legs as Viktor says, "This is a routine I choreographed many years ago. I was waiting for just the right person to perform it and…well, they never came along. I've choreographed it with my own best jumps in mind, but we can adjust it to yours. I've seen your triple axel. It needs work, but it's not bad. Do you have any quads?"

"Toe loop, Salchow and, um…well." Yuuri shrugs. "I've been working my—um, my flip."

Viktor feels a smile spread across his face. "Great, that's perfect. This routine is one of a pair that I based off two interpretations of the same song—a song about love." He smiles at the look of recognition on Yuuri's face. _All the best songs are about love._ "The short program is _Agape_. Unconditional love. The love you feel for the most important people in your life. Your parents, your children. The people you want to hold close to you and protect. Pure, clean emotion." Yuuri nods, contemplative. Viktor has a feeling that _Agape_ is an emotion that Yuuri feels well. "The free is _Eros_. Romantic love. Sexual love. The way you feel for your lover; the need to lay yourself down next to another person and hear their heart beat for you. To feel their hands on your body."

A blush rises, subtle but there, across Yuuri's cheeks and nose. He looks down at his own skates for a moment to gather himself, and Viktor lets him.  When he looks back up, Viktor taps a finger against his own chin and asks, "Would you like to guess which one I'm going to teach you?"

Yuuri smiles softly and says with such confidence and contentment that Viktor almost hates to correct him, "Agape. Unconditional love—familial love. That's something I know well."

Viktor nods. "I had a feeling it was. You're a gentle soul, Yuuri. I see it in your eyes." There is something about the cinnamon depths of Yuuri's gaze that says _love me._ Commands it, even. _Love me and you will get my love in return, and I'll never let you be lonely again_ , say those parts of Yuuri's soul visible through his eyes. Viktor wants to listen to it.

Then Viktor says, "And that's why I've chosen to give you _Eros_ ," and watches the blush spread down Yuuri's cheeks and onto his neck.

"I…I'm not sure I can do that," Yuuri says, hands worrying at each other. "I don't…well, when it comes to Eros…I don't think I can…"

"Why don't we listen to the music first?" Viktor asks, and summons the thought up into his mind so that it plays over the sound system. Viktor has listened to this music over and over again in the week since making his promise to Yuuri, just to make sure it would play in perfect detail when he needed it to. _Eros_ is all sensual violin and seductive guitar, soaring up to the rafters and vibrating over the ice and into their skates. Yuuri contemplates the music as it plays, head tilted back and arms slack at his sides. Viktor has always found it easier to relate to a piece of music than to the bare choreography at first, and Yuuri seems no different.

As the last strains echo out and the cavernous silence of the rink once again descends, Yuuri looks up again to meet Viktor's eyes, and Viktor tilts his head to the side in wordless askance. _So_ , says the movement, the rise of his eyebrows. _Do you think you can do it?_

Yuuri's teeth appear to tug at his lip. Viktor finds himself instantly seized by the want to replace Yuuri's teeth with his own. He pushes it down, back into his belly where it belongs; ignorable while it simmers. It's been years since he's felt anything like this. Since he's looked at another person and gone thick with how much he _wants_. Yuuri is slight and beautiful, black hair and thick lashes and bow lips. Viktor wonders how long ago it was that Yuuri really looked like this. Wonders how an athlete with this much drive and skill had never passed through Viktor's radar.

"Okay," Yuuri says softly, at last. He gives a nod, bangs swaying, and says again, "Okay. I'll try. I can't…I can't make any guarantees, but I'll try."

Viktor grins. "Before you dedicate yourself, would you like to see the choreography?" It's been years since he skated the routine in question, maybe since he originally choreographed it, but he somehow doesn't doubt his own ability to do it. Perhaps because being in a twilight town, in a world entirely created by memory and impression and zeros and ones, feels a little bit like an _all you have to do is believe_ type situation. One is only limited by their own thoughts, their own perceived weaknesses. If he wanted to, Yuuri could take off his glasses and never need to use them again. If Viktor wanted to, he could force the ends of his hair down to his waist and feel them sway around his elbows like he remembers from fifty years ago or more.

Because he wants to, Viktor can move in ways he hasn't in decades. It's that simple.

Yuuri nods eagerly in response. "Yes. Of course, yes." He spins around and returns to the boards, where he lifts himself up again and leans forward with hands anchoring him to his seat, attentive. Viktor, who was a small child the last time he felt anything like stage fright, feels the barest pinprick of nervousness at the back of his neck as he takes up the obligatory center ice start position. He circles a few times, angles his skates into the right configuration, cocks a hip, tosses his hair across his face. Skating has always been and forever will be about showmanship, artistry, finesse. It is, in Viktor's opinion, the perfect intersection of art and sport.

The music starts again overhead. Viktor twists his body, seductive, bringing long-dormant sexuality alive, and flicks his gaze towards the beautiful man who watches him; the only person in this huge space, the only person watching, the only reason in this moment that Viktor has to dance.

Viktor thinks that maybe, if he had met Yuuri Katsuki when his hair really was still thick and skin still smooth, this man would have become the reason Viktor did a lot of things.

The piece is short for a free program, toeing the line really, but the ISU guidelines have changed so many times since Viktor choreographed that he doesn't even know if it would meet standards now anyway. Quintuple jumps are becoming more and more common in skating now. A male performer without a quint toe is generally considered to be behind on the curve nowadays. Viktor never in his life jumped a quint; couldn't even fathom it, in a time before the first quad axel.

In the end, it's not as though it matters. There won't be any judges to dissect this performance. It's him and Yuuri, alone with the footwork and the music. Artistry for artistry's sake and nobody to tell them otherwise.

 _Heaven_ , Viktor almost lets himself think. Stops himself, because Heaven is a much more concrete subject than when he was a boy and it still makes him uncomfortable, for some reason he can't bring himself to examine.

His final pose ends up half-facing Yuuri on the corner of Viktor's vision, still gripping the boards. When Viktor turns his head, he sees the white knuckles, the high blush and the parted lips. They make Viktor feel wanton, and it's been half a lifetime since he felt that way. He slides his way towards Yuuri, whom he sees swallow, whose fingers he sees tighten on the boards.

"How was that?" Viktor asks, coming to rest beside him. "I'm rusty, I know."

"No, it was good," Yuuri murmurs, his voice thin. He has his head turned down, the long line of his neck stretched. "Very, um…Eros, I suppose." His eyes flick to Viktor's, and his pupils are large.

Viktor reaches out a hand—he doesn't give himself time to think, just does it. Yuuri's lip is soft against the pad of his thumb. Yuuri's breath stutters, and he feels it. His eyes grow wider, his pupils bigger. He doesn't push Viktor away—doesn't even move to. On the contrary, he leans in, putting most of his weight on one arm, and tilts his head. Viktor feels his breath on his face and wants, _wants_.

"Do you think you can do it?" Viktor whispers. "It's backloaded and the footwork is fast, but I've seen the way you move. I can see it in you. Will you show it to me?"

Yuuri stares at him for a heady beat, unblinking and hardly breathing. Then nods, slowly and only once.

Viktor wants to say so many things. Things like _Where have you been my entire life_ , and _How can I feel for you so much, if I've only spent a few hours with you_. He wants to tell Yuuri that he is beautiful. Wants to ask him to take him to bed.

Instead he whispers, "Good," and pulls Yuuri to his feet. "Let's start with the jumps. Show me the toe-loop."

Yuuri puts distance between them and transitions into crossovers. They meet eyes over Yuuri's shoulder as he's spotting for his jump. With his bangs fluttering and his gaze focused, he's one of the most beautiful things Viktor has ever seen. When he launches himself into the air, it's physical poetry.

* * *

It's an odd schedule that they work on. Viktor is still only uploaded once a week, and Yuuri…hasn't really made it clear how often he's uploaded; Viktor assumes that he's on the system nigh constantly. But Yuuri is disciplined, and he has always made improvement on the program by the time Viktor arrives on Friday nights. Yuuri is able to run the program all the way through by only week two, and by the time Viktor has been coming to Hasetsu for two months, Viktor might consider the program competition-worthy.

Because of an appointment running late, Viktor doesn't make it onto the system until more than an hour later than their usual set meeting time. Hasetsu is already dark when he 'wakes up', and even though he and Makkachin run across the bridge and into the rink, they still arrive well after Yuuri would have been expecting him.

Thankfully, he didn't choose to just leave. Viktor sees him through the glass separating the lobby from the rink, making his way through a step sequence. Yuuko, who's been watching him with something approaching fondness, winks at Viktor and holds a finger to her lips as he walks by. Viktor opens the door, attempting and for the most part succeeding at mouse-like stealth, and creeps in with Makkachin close to his heels. On the ice, Yuuri steps out of the sequence and angles his skates across the ice, gliding with hands on his hips.

He sighs, and Viktor makes to move towards him and announce himself in case it's his absence that Yuuri is lamenting, but Yuuri takes up a pose at center ice—and Viktor knows that it isn't _Eros_ he's performing.

Like many arias, the beginning strains of _Stammi Vincino_ offer no indication of the power and poignancy the piece will gain. The choreography was designed to evoke that sense of hidden depths, starting off slow with a simple step sequence and then gaining complexity with the triple Lutz right on the key change. Viktor doesn't know how he remembers all of this. He’s lived half his life since he choreographed it and somehow he can still remember the very thoughts in his head when he first began laying it out, even though he can't live alone anymore because he forgets to eat.

Yuuri dances it perfectly, as though he's intimately acquainted with Viktor's deepest thoughts on the subject. Viktor stands braced against the doorway and watches him be surrounded by the music, movements so synchronized that it looks as though he, himself, is creating it with his body.

He skates it until the end, only substituting a triple flip for the quad early in the program. Viktor thinks he probably could have done it, if he'd really put his mind to it—this place doesn't have the consequences that the real world does; Yuuri would not have had to worry about his leg giving out if he under-rotated or stepped out of it—but Viktor thinks he likes that about Yuuri. That he doesn't let himself be convinced by the less-than-reality of this place into going against his own nature; he lives here like he once lived in the real world, genuinely and cautiously himself.

Yuuri notices him when he claps. There is no way to stop from startling him now, and Viktor can't go without giving that performance the applause it's due. Yuuri doesn't fall down this time, thankfully; he only wobbles very slightly as he turns around to regard Viktor from center ice, arms dropping back down to his sides from the final pose.

"That was fantastic," Viktor calls, and Makkachin breaks away from him to scale the bleachers. Viktor thinks his skates onto his feet and glides onto the ice. "You learned how to do it like that after only seeing it once? That's amazing!"

Yuuri blushes and crosses one arm over his chest, stares down at his shuffling skates. "Thanks. I'm a fast learner. I also may have, um, looked up some videos of you. From—from back then."

"Oh." Viktor feels the melancholy lurking on the edges of his expression, and pushes effort into keeping it neutrally cheery and pleased. "How do they match up? I'm sure I was better back then, hm? When I was so young?"

"It's…definitely different from seeing you do it in person." Yuuri looks up from his skates at last, and offers a small smile. "I, um, liked the videos. The costume was…nice. It looked really good on you. And it’s impressive to see you in front of a crowd. You really look like you belong there. But…there's something different about watching a person do those things in front of you. _For_ you." Viktor's heart tugs, and Yuuri slips that much closer, pick toed into the ice, coy almost. "So no, not really, I don’t prefer the videos."

To Viktor's delight, Yuuri reaches out a hand and presses it to Viktor’s cheek, so feather-light that it's barely even there. Yuuri clearly isn't sure of his own actions, not with how much he blushes and how hesitant his touch is, but he lets himself do it. Says, "Look at you, Viktor. You say you're old, and maybe you are…but does it matter? This face, it isn't any different from those videos."

Viktor flinches. He can't help it. Yuuri immediately pulls his hand away.

"I'm sorry," Yuuri says, wringing his hand like it was burned. "That was so inappropriate. I didn't mean—"

"No!" Viktor grabs his hand and pulls it back to his face, presses it hard against his cheek. Yuuri's palm is warm through his glove. "It wasn't—I—you weren't—" He sighs and screws his eyes shut, nudges his forehead into Yuuri's palm until Yuuri pushes back. "What you said, it just made me think…I'm, um…I'm dying, Yuuri."

"I know," Yuuri says, gentle and low as his other hand raises to Viktor's face as well. "You wouldn't be here if you weren't. I know."

"But I'm—I'm dying so _quickly_ now." Viktor takes in a breath that accidentally turns into a gasp, something almost approaching a sob. "When I was first diagnosed they told me—oh, don't worry. Don't worry, Viktor. Medical advances are so…" He sighs and presses finger and thumb to his eyes. Yuuri swipes away the tear inching down his left cheek. "They said, you're healthy. You'll live for decades more. You'll live to be in your hundreds. But it was too aggressive, and it spread. It's only been two years. They told me it would be gone in a month and I would live for another thirty years, but it's been two. And now I'm really going to die. I had an appointment today, and…nothing is working. I'm going to die."

"How long?" Yuuri whispers after a moment, hesitant, his hands so painfully tender that Viktor almost can't bear it.

"Six months," Viktor whispers. "Maybe four. I'm seventy-three. That's not even old these days. Nobody dies in their seventies anymore."

"Yes they do." Yuuri presses their foreheads together. "People die at every age, Viktor. They always have and they always will. We're only allowed as much time as we're meant and for some people that's a full hundred years, but for others it's seventy-three. For some people it's only a breath. We're never promised our whole hundred years. We just have to hope."

Viktor wraps his arms around Yuuri, latching into him like a drowning man to a raft, and the beautiful thing about it is that Yuuri clutches him back. Viktor feels his hands fist into the shirt over his shoulder blades even as he presses his nose hard behind Yuuri's ear, eyes squeezed harshly shut. "I'm so scared, Yuuri," he hisses into Yuuri's neck. "Sometimes I lie there at night and I can—I think I can _feel_ it. Growing inside of me. Spreading. Killing me."

"I know," Yuuri whispers, and smoothes his hand along the back of Viktor's head. "I'm scared too. I know."

They migrate to the benches, where they sort of lean on each other and don't talk much. Yuuko wanders by, seeming concerned, and offers Yuuri something fried from concessions. Yuuri takes it and puts it in his mouth mechanically, and Yuuko wanders away again—but Viktor can sense her eyes on them from the skate rental. He wonders why it feels so much like they have a guardian angel, when he knows Yuuko is just a manifestation of the system. If anything, it should feel like Big Brother. But there's something benevolent about her. Caring; loving, almost.

"What are those?" Viktor asks at last.

"Takoyaki," Yuuri says. Viktor assumes, given the lack of strange overdubbing, that the word doesn't really have a translation into any of Viktor's languages. "They're fried dough with octopus. Try one?"

"No thanks," Viktor mumbles. He's never eaten on the system. He doesn't even know what food in a twilight town would be like. He knows that one doesn't _need_ to eat here, even when on the system permanently. He also knows that one can make themselves not feel hunger, if they think about it. Viktor doesn't, really. But he forgets he's supposed to have an appetite all the same, after not really having one for a year.

"There is one good thing about this," Viktor says, after the takoyaki is gone and they've been just sitting in the silent rink for well over an hour. They're going to waste the whole night, at this rate, and Viktor was hoping to convince Yuuri to try that quad flip.

"About dying?" Yuuri mumbles.

"The verb, not the noun, but yes." Viktor turns his wrist over to check his watch. "They're letting me increase my time on the system. I get fifteen hours a week now, instead of five." He knows that this is because they want him to get used to it. They want him to make this place his home.

He still hasn't decided if that's what he wants.

"That's great," Yuuri says, and the rest of the night they skate slow circles around each other. Every time Yuuri passes, Viktor just wants to reach out and lock his arms around his middle, pull him close and smell him again. Somehow, impossibly, he resists the urge every time.

* * *

On Monday, Yuuri is waiting for him outside the rink. Viktor has never seen him in anything but the harsh lighting of the rink; the setting sun softens his features and reflects off the sheen of his hair, makes him into something even more beautiful than he already is. Viktor is arrested, briefly, at the sight of him just sitting on the steps. His eyes are just a little unfocused, caught somewhere in the middle distance, until Viktor comes to his side and the thoughts clear from his gaze; he looks up and smiles.

For a stunning moment, Viktor thinks that if this was the rest of his eternity, he might be okay with that.

"I was thinking," Yuuri says, not quite meeting Viktor's eyes. "That I haven't really seen the rest of this place, and…now that I have someone to see it with, maybe I'd…like to. I don't mind if you just want to skate, like we always do, but I just thought maybe I'd…suggest a little change of scenery. Just for tonight. Since you're here more often now, we can afford a night off."

Viktor smiles. "I think that's a great idea."

A small smile graces Yuuri's face in return, tentative as it is lovely. "Great. Um, let me just—can we walk back to my place, so I can drop off my skate stuff? I brought it just in case, but—it's only a five minute walk."

"Sure." Viktor still thinks it's odd that Yuuri insists on treating this place like an extension of reality. Viktor thinks he must wear the same clothes in his place every time he's here, because he never bothers to think different clothes onto his back. He doesn't know and doesn't care where his skates go when they aren't on his feet; as soon as he steps off the ice, off they go like so much smoke evaporating. They are replaced by the memory of a pair of shoes Viktor thinks he may have owned as a young man. Heavy-soled, fashionable. They give him just that extra inch to boost him over the six-foot mark.

Yuuri does indeed live just a five-minute walk away. He leads Viktor down a side street and up a set of stone stairs, then through a gate that's been half-obscured by greenery. Viktor takes a moment to glance around the yard—it's small, but neat despite the encroaching flora, and butts up to a broad wooden porch which Yuuri climbs to slide open the door. Inside, Yuuri takes off his shoes, and Viktor does too.

"You keep a lovely home," Viktor says, because it feels like the right thing to say in this situation, even though the oddity of it tugs at his mind with every step. What do you say to someone you've only met in a fake world, when you walk into their fake house for the first time?

"Thank you," Yuuri says, and Viktor follows him through the house—it has a back-to-front stacked layout that Viktor thinks might be more traditional of Japanese homes; in order to get to the back of the house, you have to walk through the living room, kitchen, and dining room. "It's my mother's. This is the place I grew up. In a way."

"In a way?" They go through a narrow hallway to reach what Viktor assumes is Yuuri's bedroom—out the window, Viktor sees what might be a pond.

"My family owns a ryokan." Yuuri slides open the door to his room, and Viktor stays just outside the doorway until Yuuri makes it clear that he can follow. "A traditional inn, situated around a natural hotspring, an onsen. The town I'm from used to be…kind of known for them." Viktor stands in the corner next to the door and watches Yuuri drop his skate bag, and then wander into a small closet and take off his shirt. His belly is smooth except for the swirling skin of his navel, and the hair sneaking up from under his waistband. "There was a family area, and a guest area…but they weren't as clear-cut as you would think. This place is bits and pieces of the Onsen fit into a smaller area. How I see it in my mind. I never really went into the guest areas, so I think this is how I picture it when I think of it. "

"Where did you grow up?" Viktor murmurs, as Yuuri flips through a modest selection of tops on the upper left side of his closet. Below those are pants, mostly jeans. The other side of the closet is full of exercise gear.

"A seaside town in the south of Japan," Yuuri says. He chooses a shirt that he pulls over his head; a three-quarter-sleeve number of dark blue. "It's called Karatsu. This place…reminds me a lot of it."

"Is that where you are now?" Viktor murmurs. He watches Yuuri select a pair of pants and switch them out, momentarily standing in only a pair of black boxer briefs. Viktor fists a hand in his pocket.

"No," Yuuri says, as he hops to pull the jeans over his hips. He slides by Viktor to exit the bedroom, bare feet quiet and elegant on the hardwood—on passing, he furrows his brows and looks up into Viktor's eyes, licks his lips and presses two fingers to Viktor's chin. Slowly and almost contemplatively, eyes flicking across Viktor's face like he's trying to see the whole thing at once, he says, "And you…need to stop asking."

"Okay," Viktor whispers, and watches Yuuri walk back through the hallway.

"That's the Onsen," Yuuri says, waving to the pond visible through the wide and large hallway windows. Viktor realizes that there is a sliding glass door leading to it, and also that the pond is actually steaming. "Volcanic heat warms up natural aquifer water and—"

"I know how a hotspring works," Viktor says, not unkindly. "We have them in Russia." He almost says _Besides, it's not like this is real,_ and thankfully thinks better of it.

"Ah." Yuuri nods, shuffles his feet briefly, and disappears into a bathroom. Viktor stares at the water of the onsen and waits for him to emerge, changing his outfit with a thought.

Yuuri returns to him with hair gelled back and something shadowy smudged around his eyes, and Viktor feels a stab of pure arousal strike through his body to the extent that he can't think of anything to say for a long thirty seconds.

"Do I look okay?" Yuuri asks, self-consciously running a thumb underneath the waistband of his jeans. The peek of skin Viktor gets looks soft and supple.

"Oh my God," Viktor whispers, very quietly on a breath. He hasn't felt this way in years.

Has he ever felt this way?

"What?" Yuuri's brows furrow.

"Yes, you look good." Viktor takes a full step back and clears his throat. Yuuri, reassured, drops both arms back to his sides. Viktor, still unsure what to say, blurts the first thing that comes to mind. "Um…yes. Do you—I didn't, um—it seemed like you were upset. A minute ago. I didn't mean to—I just didn't want you to have to explain. It wasn't that I didn't…"

"I know." Yuuri clears his throat. "Yeah, I know. Um, I just…sometimes, when I'm nervous, I…talk?"

Viktor furrows his brows. "You're nervous around me?"

Yuuri glances away from him, somewhere over his shoulder. "Um…yes. But not…for the reasons you think." He steps towards Viktor and tilts his face up, and for a heart-stopping moment Viktor thinks they will actually kiss. Viktor anticipates it in a way that a stumbling person anticipates the fall.

"Why, then?" Viktor whispers, bowing his head.

Yuuri, seeming almost sheepish all at once, retreats and shuffles rapidly back into the main room, where he pulls on a pair of shoes in the entryway. Viktor watches the long and prominent line of his back arch when he bends, the graceful movement of his shoulders as he ties the laces on a pair of boots. When he straightens up, Viktor can't tell if the flush on his cheeks is from embarrassment or the blood going to his head while he was bent over. "Have you ever had ramen?" he asks.

"I've had the kind from a pouch?" Viktor says, thinking about entire days in Zurich when he and Chris would exist on nothing but hot water and instant ramen packages. Not for lack of money to spend—they were young and somewhat famous, on their way to the top of the skating world; Viktor was the poster boy for Sportmaster and Chris had a deal with a maker of fine Swiss sport watches—but because it was the easiest thing to make when one was twenty-two and full of ennui, lazing about in a penthouse apartment in Switzerland with one's sometimes-lover while wearing as few clothes as possible.

Yuuri barks out a laugh, maybe a little mocking. "Those don't count."

Viktor isn't really insulted, but he pouts because he likes the teasing smile on Yuuri's face. "Well, then."

Yuuri opens the door and jerks his head. The sound of nightlife is already floating across the river. "Come on."

They walk together past the rink and across the footbridge. Viktor realizes at some point that Makkachin is not by his side anymore and thinks he must have, on some subconscious level, sent Makkachin back to wherever it is he stays when Viktor isn't in Hasetsu—or else that Makkachin returned home of his own volition. Viktor hopes it's the latter. The thought of Makkachin, even just the idea of him, that impression of a memory based on the real Makkachin, being lost and alone somewhere on the mainframe of the vast twilight system is a distressing one.

Yuuri leads him to an open-air restaurant of some sort, where patrons sit at a bar and are served large bowls of broth and noodles. Yuuri slides onto a chair and Viktor watches him order—speaking so quickly and with such fluency that the automatic translation stutters on the colloquialisms. Viktor wishes, briefly but fervently, that the translator could be turned off—he wants to hear what Yuuri sounds like, speaking his native language with ease.

The ramen is flavorful; Viktor is surprised by how much there is to taste. His idea of what taste would be like in his place has suffered under the same preconception that sight and smell had—that it would be somehow less, would have the wrongness of the artificial. Viktor chews a piece of roasted pork and wonders at the fact that it tastes recently-butchered despite never having been part of a real pig.

Yuuri orders a small bottle of spirit which arrives with a pair of vaguely shot glass-shaped ceramic cups. He pours them both cupfuls, holds his up and raises an eyebrow. "In Japan, we toast before we drink."

"What are we toasting to?" Viktor asks, holding his up as well.

"To…" Yuuri tilts his head, eyes sparkling and thoughtful. "To life."

Viktor swallows harshly and nods jerkily. His throat clicks when he opens his mouth, a keen noise. "To life," he whispers. He tilts the whole cupful into his mouth, and watches Yuuri chuckle as he takes just a sip. It's stronger than wine but not vodka, fruity-sweet and chilled, and has the mouthfeel of something quite expensive.

"It's sake," Yuuri tells him, a soft and perhaps somewhat jesting smile pressed into the rim of his cup as he watches Viktor smack his lips and examine the bottom of his own. "You sip it."

Viktor thinks he already knew this on some level. As a younger man, he fancied himself somewhat worldly—a connoisseur of the finer things. There was a desperately overpriced sushi restaurant across the river in Saint Petersburg where he threw back shots of sake like vodka and picked the cucumber out of crab rolls like a heathen.

"Oh," Viktor whispers, and watches Yuuri pour him another cupful.

"To love," is what Yuuri says this time, and clicks their glasses together again. "Eros and Agape. Kampai."

Viktor smiles when the translator lets him hear at least that one word in Japanese. "Za lyoo-bóf," he says, and Yuuri's face doesn't betray what language he heard it in.

They finish the bottle and order another, and by the time they leave Viktor's head feels like what he imagines the inside of a bumblebee's chest to feel like. There is a gentle, monotonous buzz going on somewhere behind his right ear and everything is just a little fuzzy around the edges. He grabs onto Yuuri's rear beltloop and lets himself be towed like a shipwreck. Yuuri's hand reaches back to wrap around his wrist, mooring him firmly.

"I didn't think you could get drunk here!" he tells Yuuri, perhaps a little too loud as Yuuri guides him through the crowded main street. It's too close to midnight, but Viktor's belly is warm and so is Yuuri's hand.

Yuuri says, "You can if you want!" and turns his flushed face up towards the streetlights, gaze unfocused somewhere in the middle distance.

"Where are we going?" Viktor asks, stumbling but not falling as he and Yuuri wander further and further into town and then, as they keep going, farther and farther away.

"I'm not sure," Yuuri says, and they keep going until Yuuri finds a stretch of dim and lightly-trafficked beach. He takes off his shoes and socks, stuffing the socks into the shoes and setting them on the sea wall. The surf of the sea is calm and low, and Viktor watches Yuuri lean down to roll up the hems of his jeans. When he straightens back up, he puts his hands on his waist and stares out towards the night-blue waters, shirt and hair flapping out behind him. He looks ethereal.

"It's been a long time since I could do this," Yuuri tells him, and creeps towards the surf. Viktor watches for the shiver that will run up his back when he touches the water, but none comes. He wades in up to his ankles, unconcerned. Viktor shivers watching him lift one foot out of the surf to trace a meaningless pattern in the sand with his toe. "I used to, um, stand in the ocean like this when I was a kid and—and think about what was on the other side. Or just, you know—who else might be doing the same thing. It's all the same water, you know? I know the oceans are all named different things, but…it's all the same water, when you get down to it. That links us all together."

"Yeah," Viktor croaks, and shuffles towards the water with newly bare feet. The water is surprisingly warm—or perhaps unsurprisingly, considering the nature of this place. "I grew up by the sea, too. Saint Petersburg."

"I know," Yuuri says, low and slow, and when Viktor looks at him in askance he chuckles, "I looked you up, remember?"

"Oh, right." The tide rushes up to them and Viktor feels sand slide between his toes. When it recedes again, both he and Yuuri have sunk half an inch into the beach. Viktor wonders if they would just sink all the way down, if they stood here long enough.

There is a long and comfortable moment of silence into which the wind blows and Yuuri tilts his head, eyes closed and lips parted like he's trying to taste the air.

"I'm going to die soon," Yuuri tells him then, and Viktor feels his heart drop into his stomach.

"Yes," Viktor whispers, because he had assumed as much. Yuuri has been dropping hints to that effect since their first meeting, although Viktor still doesn't know what he's dying of. The various consequences of growing very elderly, perhaps. Yuuri's eyes and face are young in this place, but he has an old soul.

"When I do," Yuuri tells him, and opens his eyes to tilt his head down to the sand, watching his feet sink little by little into the ground. "I'll…when I die, I'll be cremated. Because that's how Japanese people…um, do things. And they'll lay out my ashes and my—my family will pick the, um, the bones out of my ashes with chopsticks and put them in an urn. Feet first, all the way to my head—so that I won't be upside down for the rest of eternity." He laughs here, and Viktor laughs as well for lack of any other way to react. "The most important bone is…is here." Yuuri taps his Adam's apple. "We think of it as…the link between the brain and the body. Usually it's picked up by your spouse…or your eldest child. If a child dies before their parent…usually it's their mother."

Viktor almost wants to ask who it would be for Yuuri. He doesn't, for obvious reasons.

"Then, they'll take them home and keep them there for awhile, and then I'll be put in a grave. And I'll stay there. Forever. In the dark, with—with my grandparents and great-grandparents and a brother who was stillborn before I was alive, and my parents and—and my sister, eventually. And—nobody—I—I don't have children, and I'm not married, and my sister has never wanted those things so I…there won't be anyone to remember me. The family line is ending with me and soon…soon there won't be anyone to remember I even existed. Our family plot will be passed for hundreds of years without anyone having any idea that the people buried in there were once—living, thriving people. Nobody will remember anything about the Katsukis."

Viktor opens his mouth, hears the empty noise his throat makes when words refuse to emerge.

Yuuri turns to him—his expression is melancholically sweet, like nothing Viktor has ever really seen before. He swings a hand out and catches Viktor's wrist, runs a thumb over the prominent bone, wets his lips and finally speaks.

"Will you tell someone about me?" he asks, painfully earnest. "So that maybe they'll remember me? And maybe…if by any chance they ever find themselves passing through Karatsu…maybe they'll think of me. And put a flower on my grave."

"Yuuri," Viktor whispers, hoarse. "If I could, I would tell the _world_ about you."

There is a smile on Yuuri's face, and it wobbles but doesn't fall when he whispers, "Thank you." He slides his feet out of the wet sand, impossibly elegant for someone in such a position, and turns towards Viktor to pull his head down, hand cradling the back of his neck. He kisses Viktor's cheek. The corner of his mouth almost touches the corner of Viktor's, and he's _so close_. Almost reflexively, Viktor turns his head, catches Yuuri's cheek in his palm and—

Far away, a beeping starts. Viktor freezes and jerks back several inches. "It's midnight."

Yuuri, who has a smile on his face and a gentleness to his posture that says he knows what Viktor was about to do, says, "I'll see you on Wednesday then, Viktor."

 _Call me Vitya_ , Viktor doesn't have a chance to say. He feels Yuuri's fingers slide out of his hand, and lets himself fall into wakefulness.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! This story will be posted in three installments and will update next Sunday and the Sunday after that. The rating will change, and it will change with the next update, so please be aware of that. The wordcount will be approximately 36000.
> 
> As always, I am LavenderProse on Tumblr and I always love to hear from people on my blog! Also, if anybody has a concern or thinks I should warn for something that hasn't been warned for, please let me know--preferably in a kinder way.
> 
> Happy New Year! You will be your best self in 2018. I believe in you.


	2. Two

Some time after the night on the beach, Viktor arrives to the rink and finds that Yuuri isn't on the ice—instead, an unfamiliar man is in the rink with who Viktor assumes to be his three daughters. They can't be older than six, dressed in color-coordinated pastel outfits. Identical triplets—a sight which at first puts a pleased smile on Viktor's face, because identical triplets are something you don't see every day, and they're such cute little girls in their little skates and their ponytails. Then reason reaches him, and he remembers that none of this is real—and if there are children here, those children are dead or dying.

Yuuri is sitting halfway up a set of bleachers, watching the father and daughters with a gentle expression on his face. Viktor joins him, Makkachin bounding up ahead of him. Yuuri isn't surprised by the sight of Makkachin—he holds out a hand and clicks his tongue, and Makkachin goes to him like it's where he's meant to be. Viktor sets himself on Yuuri's other side, knees touching and shoulders brushing together, and murmurs, "Those children…are they dead?"

"Strictly speaking, they weren't ever alive," Yuuri murmurs. "They're impressions."

Viktor frowns and leans forward, elbows on knees, as though being six extra inches closer to the girls fifty feet away from him will make it easier to understand the conundrum they present. Impressions, from Viktor's experience, are not very emotive, and don't have personalities so much as a friendly, inoffensive demeanor that reduces their uncanniness to a tolerable level. These little girls are full of emotion. Their joyous shrieks aren't any different from those that Viktor has heard from small children his entire life—they swoop back and forth across the ice with abandon, dragging the man on the ice with them to and fro by the hands.

They are calling him Papa.

"How is that?" Viktor asks. He wasn't aware that impressions could be children. Impressions exist in twilight towns for the comfort and convenience of those who inhabit it. He can't think of a reason why the technology would impress itself into the image of children, unless it was to interact with other children. "Is that man an impression too?" Are there entire families of impressions?

"No," Yuuri murmurs, and that sadness is back in his voice. That sadness that emerges when he talks about anything that isn't skating, almost as though his time on the ice is the only time when he isn't thinking about his own mortality and everything it means. Viktor wishes that he could find something to talk about that didn't wheel back around to the topic of death—but death is everywhere in this place. Its very existence is so steeped in death that it's all one can really think about when they're in this place. Or even when they aren't in it.

Viktor can't remember the last time he went a full day without thinking about death.

"His name is Takeshi," Yuuri says eventually, and he sighs and rolls his neck as though preparing himself. "He's here once a week, like you used to be. You've never seen each other because his days are Wednesdays, and yours were Fridays. Remember when I told you that you're only the second person I've ever seen here?"

"Vaguely," Viktor murmurs. "Yuuko never mentioned anybody else coming here, though. She said you were the only visitor she ever saw."

"That's because she wouldn't have considered Takeshi a visitor," Yuuri says. "He's her husband, you see."

Viktor, very slowly, turns his head and clicks his teeth. "You're going to have to explain that one."

Yuuri hums out a laugh and smiles down at Makkachin, whose head is on his knee. "I figured as much. Takeshi's been coming here for about as long as I have—the impression who used to man the skate desk disappeared the day Takeshi came to Hasetsu. Yuuko's been there ever since. I think the mainframe replaced the old impression with Yuuko because it fit with Takeshi's memories of her—and because it's using Takeshi's memories of Yuuko to create a more personable impression. I really like Yuuko, so I'm not complaining."

"So Yuuko is…an impression of a real person?" Viktor murmurs, and glances at Makkachin.

"She's like Makkachin, yes. She wasn't uploaded herself, and the triplets weren't either, but the system is using Takeshi's memories to create impressions of them."

"What happens when the real Yuuko is uploaded?" Viktor asks. "Will she replace the impression?"

"That, um…won't happen." Yuuri is playing with Makkachin's ears now, probably to avoid meeting Viktor's eyes as he speaks. "The reason Takeshi is…the reason he's created them is because…they died. Years ago, before—before the twilight system was invented. There was a fire, and Takeshi wasn't home. He was devastated, as you can imagine. Losing all three of his daughters and his wife in one fell swoop…I can’t even think about it.”

Viktor can’t either.

Yuuri looks back out to Takeshi, who is a friendly-seeming man of a firm build looking to be perhaps in his early thirties—in this place, at least. “He was young when it happened, and I don't know exactly how old he is, but he must be quite old. He said that he and Yuuko had known each other since they were children. He told me about leaving letters on her windowsill when they were young because neither of them had mobile phones or computers yet. He must have loved her very much, because he never remarried."

"Wow," Viktor breathes. He leans back, elbows on the seat behind him, and stares for a long moment at the rafters. "That's…upsetting."

"Which part?" Yuuri murmurs, looking up now but still not quite looking _at_ him. His gaze is focused on a point somewhere behind Viktor's ear.

"All of it," Viktor says.

Yuuri's jaw fixes strangely, and he looks back out towards the ice. "I think it's sad. That he lost them. But I think it's a good thing that he was able to…have them again. Isn't that what we hope will happen, when we die? That we'll be reunited with everyone who died before us?"

"But they won't," Viktor murmurs. "When he dies…if he stays here, they won't see him again."

"But what if they aren't there? What if they aren't…anywhere, just gone?"

Viktor closes his eyes, feels something rise in him that might be a scream, or might be a wail. He doesn't know—and he doesn't speak until it passes. When he does, he curls his hands around the edge of the bench and says, "I don't know."

Yuuri's hand covers his.

"I don't know what happens after you die," Yuuri tells him, and Viktor feels his thumb stroke over his knuckles. He looks down at Yuuri's hand, which is smaller and wider than his own, and then up into Yuuri's eyes for the first time since arriving at the rink. "Nobody does. And the idea of dying used to terrify me. I'm still scared, but…at least I know what will happen now. And I have to take comfort in that, even if it isn't the…natural progression of things."

Viktor isn't sure what to say to that—and he's spared the responsibility of it when one of the little girls skates up to the boards and calls, "Yuuri! Who is that?"

She seems completely human in every way, right down to her missing front tooth and the wide-eyed precociousness of her expression.

"This is my friend Viktor, Axel," Yuuri says to her, and nudges Viktor to wave, which he does.

"Viktor?" Takeshi's head raises. "You mean Viktor as in—"

"I told you not to talk about that!" Yuuri shrieks across the ice, and the three girls laugh.

"Papa, Yuuri has a crush!" one of them laughs, swooping past her father with her hands folded behind her back, a certain childlike elegance to her movements.

"Gross!" cackles another, the one Yuuri had called Axel.

Next to him, Yuuri's face has gone the color of an overripe beet—and Takeshi is standing in the middle of his daughters, trying to look apologetic even as he laughs. Viktor gazes at Yuuri's deeply-colored face, wants to know what his blushing cheek would feel like under his lips.

Instead, he laughs as well and says, "Are you going to introduce me, Yuuri?"

Yuuri rolls his eyes. "It seems they already know who you are."

"It _seems_ we're on uneven footing, then," says Viktor, and makes his way down onto the ice. His skates hit the ice easily, without him even really having to think about it now, and he glides across to Takeshi and his daughters.

"Nishigori Takeshi," he says, and he and Viktor shake hands and bow. "These are my daughters; Axel, Lutz and Loop. Say hello, girls."

They do, bowing at the waist all in a line. "Hello, sir," they chorus, maybe slightly resentful for the formality.

A formality which lasts for all of two seconds. As soon as they straighten back up, Viktor is met with a barrage of questions so rapid that Viktor has difficulty parsing them, between the translator and the chorus of voices.

"Did you really win the Olympics? _Three times?!_ "

"Can you show me how to do a triple axel?"

"Can I pet your dog?"

"Do people in Russia really have to wear snow shoes everywhere?"

" _Girls_ ," Takeshi says, firmer than he's been until now, and the girls subside grudgingly. He clears his throat, glances apologetically at Viktor. "I'm sorry. They don't usually…meet new people."

In the split-second of eye contact they have at that moment, Viktor sees in Takeshi's eyes that he knows what Yuuri must have told him. He sees the chagrin there, as though he is imagining what Viktor must be thinking of him—an old man, dying and so alone that he has given form to the memory of his long-dead daughters and wife to keep him company in his final days.

As a younger man, Viktor would have felt desperately sorry for him—pitying.

Now he empathizes with him so deeply that it brings a lump to his throat. He wonders if he would have done the same thing, if he'd had someone he loved so deeply. If he hadn't neglected life and love for so long that they left him behind, left him an old man with no family and too many regrets.

He thinks of Makkachin, and wonders if he hadn't done just that.

"You're Yuuko's husband?" he asks, because they both know that the situation has to be addressed in some way or another.

Hesitantly, Takeshi nods.

"She's lovely," Viktor says, softly. "So are your girls. You have a beautiful family."

Takeshi, after a moment spent investigating Viktor's face, bows deep. "Thank you."

Yuuko appears at the gate to the rink and calls, "Girls! Come off the ice, Viktor and Yuuri have to practice!"

"No, it's fine," says Viktor, who can't stand the idea of being the reason that this man can't spend the one day a week he has with his daughters in any way he wants. "It's a big rink—they can stay."

The girls turn their eyes onto their father, huge and wanting. Their words are a jumble of, "Can we stay Papa? Please Papa can we stay? Papa can we—"

"Alright," Takeshi says, holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "But only for a little while longer. You have to eat your lunch and do your homework."

Viktor isn't sure how that works, impressions eating lunch and doing homework, but the potential of the twilight system is nigh infinite—millions of terabytes and more being added each day. Thousands of engineers and scientists and computer programmers all over the world worked tirelessly for ten years to bring it into existence. It's one of the great modern miracles. It has the potential to be the thing that finally, at last, brings peace to the world.

It's Heaven on Earth—and anything is possible.

Viktor thinks all of this as the ghost of a little girl who died decades ago leads him away by the hand, begging him to watch her sit-spin, and then he doesn't think about it anymore. He doesn't think about it anymore because Loop does her clumsy sitspin, and he claps for her, and then he demonstrates for her how to do more rotations and faster. And then Yuuri descends onto the ice and chases Lutz around the rink until he catches her, and tickles her until she cries uncle. It's easy to forget that these little girls aren't real—and he does. He lets himself forget. They're just children.

When the girls are ushered off the ice by their father, off to do their homework and eat their lunch, Viktor angles his skates towards Yuuri and glides across to him, gazing at the effortless and artful drape of his arms over the boards, the soft expression on his face.

"It's easy to forget," Viktor murmurs, leans next to him against the boards. "That they're not real."

"They're as real as anybody else in this place," Yuuri murmurs.

"But people like you and I…people like Takeshi. We're still connected to the real world. Even tenuously."

"But not forever." Yuuri stretches out a hand, presses his fingers to Viktor's cheek—a feather-light touch, the very whorls of his fingerprints brushing against the peach fuzz on Viktor's face. "Someday, probably soon, we'll die. And then I don't think we can consider ourselves any different from impressions. We're memories loaded onto a giant computer and given form. At that point, there'll literally be no difference between us and them aside from…our own autonomy. Who was it that said _I think, therefore I am_?"

"Descartes, I think," Viktor whispers.

"I think you're right," Yuuri replies, and Viktor feels his thumb slip towards the corner of his mouth. "And I think that what he meant by that was…the only thing that is ever certain is what we, ourselves, feel. I don't know if the girls or Yuuko are real, because I'm not them. I'm not in their heads. But they're people. They can interact with me, and they show emotion, and that provokes an emotional response from me. They make me feel. And you…" His eyes deepen, his voice goes soft. "I can reach out and—I can put my hand on you. I can…feel your skin. You feel _real_ to me, and I can only trust what I _feel_. And you make me—" His other hand rises, presses to the other side of Viktor's face. Viktor follows the pull of his grasp until their foreheads are pressed together and he can feel Yuuri's breath across his lips.

"You make me feel so much," Yuuri whispers, and Viktor's hands go to his waist, pulling Yuuri's body tight to his as he presses their lips together.

Viktor was a young man the last time he felt as though he had a right to sensuality. With Yuuri's hands on his face, with Yuuri's mouth against his, with the slick heat of his tongue _pressing_ , Viktor feels it come back to him like the words of a language he hasn’t spoken for decades. Yuuri's hands burn a trail down his back; Yuuri tilts his head and opens his mouth and Viktor feels like if he just presses his body against Yuuri's, if he just puts every possible inch of himself against Yuuri, that they will meld into one.

"Was that, um…" Yuuri's hand presses to his chest, and Viktor clutches his wrist—Yuuri's eyelashes are so long than he can feel them against his own cheeks. "Was that okay?"

Viktor laughs, and presses an adoring kiss to Yuuri's forehead. "That was wonderful."

* * *

Viktor thinks about that kiss obsessively for the next few days, although he doesn’t grace the nurses with an explanation when they ask him why he’s so distracted. He knows it worries them, and he knows that they wonder if it indicates a worsening in his symptoms, but he isn’t sure if it matters at this point. They already know he’s dying. His death certificate is all but signed, just awaiting a date and time. The least they can do is leave him to his daydreams, odd as they are for a man of his age to have.

He thinks himself strange, sometimes, when he considers Yuuri. He knows him as a young man, unblemished and ungrayed. When compared to his own agedness, it feels wrong in some way.

But it doesn’t waylay his musings because then, inevitably, he remembers Yuuri touching his cheek, saying _Look at you_ , and the expression of his eyes when he said it being the first thing that made Viktor feel beautiful in _years_. It’s a cure for his own dysphoria, be it a temporary one.

It’s not that these thoughts are new. For the last several weeks, Yuuri has been his first thought on waking and his last thought on going to sleep—and a frequent thought in between. His days are long, but unstimulating. Pain wakes him early and makes it hard to sleep until late into the night. He finds himself relying more and more on the influence of the little device that sends him to Hasetsu, and Yuuri. On those nights, falling asleep feels more like waking up—and even here, when he wakes up, Yuuri is the first thing on his mind.

Makkachin leads the way to the rink now, as excited as he is to see Yuuri on the days they’re here. It’s Makkachin who notices Yuuri first, alerting Viktor to his presence on the front steps of the ice rink again. He’s just as pensive and softly thought-lost as the first time Viktor found him on the steps during sunset—and when he sees Viktor, his gaze clears. Something like _resolve_ settles onto his face. He stands, popping up under Viktor’s nose and offering him a fleeting waft of the scent of his hair; something clean and minerally.

“I have something to show you,” he says, as he takes Viktor’s hand between both of his own, and Viktor revels for a moment in their fingers sliding together.

Then he smiles, squeezes Yuuri’s hands. “Of course.”

Yuuri tugs, briefly, on Viktor’s wrists. “In the—um, in the rink. Come in…in five minutes. Okay?”

A thrill of excitement goes through Viktor. He wants to tell Yuuri how much he adores surprises, but he isn’t sure how to say that in this moment, and so simply smiles and nods and bows his head to drop a brief kiss onto Yuuri’s mouth. Yuuri goes taut against him, but it isn’t a negative reaction.

“Five minutes,” Yuuri murmurs again, as he presses his fingers against Viktor’s chin and puts centimeters between their mouths. He closes back in for another kiss, languid and quiet. Viktor likes the sound their lips make, together.

When Yuuri pulls away, he hops up the steps to the ice castle and disappears inside. Viktor sits on the steps with Makkachin between his knees, flopping his ears up and down in a mindlessly playful way—Makkachin pants and makes whining attempts to shove his head into the cradle of Viktor’s palm to receive pets. The sky makes slow and steady progress from pink-blue to red-purple.

Four minutes and forty-seven seconds after Yuuri goes into the ice castle, Viktor rises to trace his steps—he takes the front steps two at a time, Makkachin bounding up beside him, and slides through the main doors and into the lobby. Yuuko isn’t behind the desk—Viktor doesn’t know where she’s gone, but he has a suspicion that her absence is purposeful. His stomach swoops with anticipation.

The rink, on first glance, looks to be empty. Viktor glances back and forth across the ice several times as he makes his way from the door to the bleachers, Makkachin already taking his habitual place at the top. He knows Yuuri is near—a room, no matter how big, has a certain _aura_ when one is not alone in it.

“Yuuri?” he calls, leaning on the boards now. “Where are you?”

Like it was a cue he was waiting for, Yuuri skates on, unseen previously from the point at which Viktor stands. He sweeps onto the ice, fluid, his whole body held at readiness. He is the physical personification of kinetic energy; of potential waiting to be utilized. Viktor watches him—feels how wide his own eyes are, how hard his own heart beats. Yuuri is wearing something that Viktor remembers from a lifetime ago. Black, shimmering, and extravagant, Viktor can still recall the way it felt against his frame—he was fifteen, and he had never worn something so revealing, on or off the ice. He remembers having to subtly adjust his own balance to account for the skirt twirling on jumps. He remembers how easy it was to catch chill in an ice rink while wearing so much mesh.

He doesn’t remember the song he skated to when he wore it.

“The Lilac Fairy,” says Yuuri, as if he can read Viktor’s mind. He’s in front of him now, both of them less than half an arm span away on either side of the boards. “I told you, I looked you up.”

Viktor can only smile, lost for words.

“It was your free program for Junior Worlds one year,” says Yuuri. He pulls on the fabric over his thumbs, smiles at something that only he is privy to. “It was your first gold medal. Wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Viktor whispers. “It was.”

“It was the beginning of an era,” Yuuri whispers. “The birth of a legend. Can you imagine? If someone were to skate onto the ice wearing it today? Can you think what people would say? It would be like the second coming of Christ.”

Viktor’s breath stutters. He doesn’t know if saying such a thing is blasphemy, and he isn’t sure he cares. Yuuri is resplendent before him, wearing a memory that Viktor had forgotten. He reaches out and drifts his fingers over the embellishments, the stones and the fabric and Yuuri’s skin almost-touchable under the mesh.

Yuuri says, “Viktor?” and when Viktor looks up, he’s transformed into something Viktor has never seen before.

Eros. He _is_ Eros.

“Don’t take your eyes off me,” Yuuri whispers, a hand pulling into the lapel on Viktor’s shirt, and Viktor can only nod mechanically, obligingly. He doesn’t think he could take his eyes away if he tried.

Yuuri turns, and skates to center ice, where he takes up the starting pose for _Eros_. Viktor’s knuckles go tight on the ledge of the boards. As the opening notes of the song hit, Yuuri sweeps into motion with a kiss blown across the ice and directly towards Viktor—and Viktor’s breath leaves him.

He is like the erotic given form. Every flick of a wrist strikes electricity down Viktor’s back and settles, liquid hot, into him. The hem of the skirt flicks, offering constant and enticing peeks of the red underneath; when air resistance settles it against his hips as he glides, glancing back to spot for a jump, it makes Viktor’s vision almost blur in a strange way, as he attempts to keep track of every part of him at once. When his thighs part in a spread eagle, Viktor is helpless to the thoughts that cross his mind—he is acutely aware, all at once, of where his cock is settled in his pants.

The jumps are flawless. Somewhere, underneath the haze of arousal, Viktor recognizes this; Yuuri has finally let himself forget his inhibitions and _fly_.

It’s been something like forty years since Viktor choreographed this particular piece. Four decades, give or take, to find someone who embodied Eros so flawlessly. Yuuri Katsuki is a gift given to Viktor on his deathbead; a man who has somehow taken the thoughts from Viktor’s head and implemented them into realness, into something that Viktor can see and touch.

Viktor has never been in love. But he wonders if it feels like this.

The frantic violins finally ease into quiet—Yuuri stands back at center, arms flung about himself and hip cocked. He is breathing hard, cheeks red, hair disheveled. It reminds Viktor and his straining erection of other things.

Viktor applauds. Yuuri turns, wobbling after rearranging his center of gravity around his own momentum. He crosses the ice, panting still. Once he’s in arm’s reach, Viktor _grabs_ him—settles his fingers around the tuck of Yuuri’s hips, were the crystalline embellishments shimmer in an echo of his iliac furrow, and tugs until Yuuri is snug against him.

“Was that good?” Yuuri whispers, as Viktor is pulling him, as his body curls into the cradle of Viktor’s. They’re of a height, with Yuuri in skates and Viktor not, but Yuuri still tilts his head—baring his tender neck, a daring act of submission. Eros is still in his body—it lives in his red cheeks, and the hand he tucks against the small of Viktor’s back, and their hips pressing together until Viktor _knows_ Yuuri must feel him—how hard he is.

“It was amazing,” Viktor breathes. “It was…” He’s overcome, in a way, by his own feelings of want. He’s silly with it.

“Was it everything you wanted?” Yuuri asks.

“Yes,” Viktor says, even as he’s thinking _I want you—I want everything about you from your hair to your toes—I want to_ taste _you, I want to know how hot it is inside your body_ —

“I’m glad,” Yuuri whispers, and kisses him in an almost chaste way—with his lips, and slow—slow enough that Viktor goes lightheaded trying not to breathe. Then he pulls away, and settles to take off his skates.

When he rises from this, after putting his skates in their bag, and after zipping a jacket over the costume, he rakes his gaze over Viktor’s body—his flushed cheeks, his fisted hands, the obvious bulge of his erection.

“Come on,” Yuuri says then, and holds out his hand. Viktor, unhesitatingly, takes it and follows.

Yuuri leads the way to his little house. The sunset casts a golden hue off his hair, and Viktor thinks to himself that it probably doesn't matter that none of this is real, because paintings aren't real either—and that is what Yuuri looks like in this moment. A work of art, paint lovingly and carefully swiped onto canvas until its angelic subject came out in all his tender detail.

Like the last time they were here, Yuuri toes off his shoes in the entryway and leads the way through the house. Makkachin, who Viktor has been consciously trying not to send away either purposefully or accidentally, followed them from the rink and now wanders off into the house, probably to find a warm corner to lay in. Viktor traces Yuuri’s steps in his own socked feet, and halts in the doorway of Yuuri's bedroom—watches as he tugs off his jacket, and then turns his head to Viktor as he curls his hands behind his back to find the zipper tab.

"Have you ever been in a hot spring?" Yuuri asks him, voice gone honey-thick with something barely remembered. It goes straight through him, heady.

"Once or twice," says Viktor. His voice sounds faint to his own ears.

Yuuri’s fingers pause in their attempts on the zipper. "Do you want to…take a bath with me?"

Viktor's belly does a backflip, and his heart rockets up into his throat.

"Yes," he says, and it comes out sounding like a prayer. His eyes trace Yuuri's steps as he crosses the room, plants himself in front of Viktor and rests his hand, ever so gently, over Viktor's navel. Viktor feels his own muscles jump out of complete instinct, feels the brief hesitation of Yuuri's fingers before he resolves himself and presses down, bows his head to watch his own fingertips disappear up under Viktor's shirt, teasing at his belt buckle.

"There are no clothes in the onsen," Yuuri whispers, and then swallows audibly, his eyes still down. A quick, agile little movement of his wrist undoes Viktor's belt, and then pulls it from its loops, the buckle clinking in a way that is somehow specific to a belt being removed by another person. As the belt goes, Yuuri slides his other hand down, the heel of his hand against the press of Viktor's erection, his fingers sliding between Viktor's legs and curling around his balls.

"Oh," Viktor whispers, throbbing.

Slowly, Yuuri's fingers grip the tab of Viktor's zipper and pull. Viktor's cock fills as the constriction of his pants falls away. Yuuri glances up from under his lashes.

"Alright?" he asks then, and Viktor realizes that he's nervous under this veneer of seduction—that the flush on his cheeks is just as much from shyness as from arousal. Struck with the instant need to reassure him, Viktor takes half a step closer, bringing them chest-to-chest, and sweeps a hand around behind Yuuri's back, pulls him forward and up.

"More than alright," he whispers against Yuuri's ear. His hands go behind Yuuri’s back, pulling down the zipper and moving his fingers over all of his newly exposed skin—warm, and goose bumped, with moles and what appears to be a portwine birthmark in the small of his back, visible to Viktor in the mirror of the closet. Yuuri gasps against his neck and tightens his grip; Viktor twitches against his hand.

Viktor lets Yuuri undress him, very pointedly not just thinking the clothes off his body, as he's done time and time again. Yuuri's hands are beautiful; quick fingers moving down buttons with a kind of choreographed grace, a warm palm splayed over Viktor's chest when he pushes away his shirt. He's already breathing heavily, cinnamon-hued eyes darting everywhere, almost like Viktor is a book and he's trying to soak up every word on the page. Viktor slides his hands up to the two flaps of fabric over Yuuri’s shoulder blades and peels the costume away from his shoulders and arms, from his chest and then all the way down to his hips. His fingers find the trail of hair there, neat but thick and so, so black.

"Has anyone ever told you," Viktor whispers, sliding his hand back up, palm flat, "how beautiful you are?"

Yuuri looks up from under his lashes and says, "No," with honesty. "Not like this, no."

"They didn't know what they had, then," Viktor says, and bows his head to press their mouths together. Yuuri's tongue is hot, slick, sliding past his lips with sureness and curving up behind his teeth like it knows where Viktor's secrets live. His slim fingers wrap around Viktor's length, hot through the silk of Viktor's boxers. His thumb swipes over the head, and Viktor's knees quake.

Yuuri's mouth slides away from Viktor's, over his cheek and under his jaw. Viktor tilts his head up, spreads a palm over Yuuri's full asscheek and squeezes as he pants up at the ceiling, the feeling of Yuuri's tongue at his pulse point going straight through him. He's masterful, sensual, and when his teeth sink into Viktor's neck and his mouth _sucks_ , Viktor feels his toes curl, feels his nails dig into the fabric draped over Yuuri’s hips.

"Oh," Viktor hisses. "Oh, I liked that."

Yuuri smiles against his neck, and then does it again. Viktor spends a moment thinking about how he will look now, with Yuuri's marks all over him, before remembering that the marks won't remain. They will be gone when he wakes up from this place. No evidence of what transpires here will be left. Yuuri Katsuki is little more than an abstract concept.

Death, Viktor is coming to realize, is unjust and inelegant in all its forms.

"Alright?" Yuuri asks, obviously having noticed the slight flag in Viktor's arousal, and the sudden melancholy that has enveloped him. He kisses Viktor's jaw, and then his chin. Little things, reassuring. His hand on Viktor's cock is slow, intimate in a way that those things usually aren't.

Viktor pulls him in by the hand he has on his ass and, for a moment, just _holds_ him there, against him, a warm body even though some part of his mind keeps trying to force him to reject Yuuri as unreal. He's the realest thing that Viktor has right now—the closest piece of human connection Viktor has had in so long, and the only person Viktor has spoken to who understands at least a little of what he's feeling. He is mysterious, and sensual and _kind_ , and being with him is the only time that Viktor thinks he could be happy in this place.

"Would it scare you," Viktor whispers, "if I told you that I could very easily fall in love with you? That I think I may have already started?"

Yuuri's breath halts against his neck, and for one weightless instant Viktor is terrified. It floods his heart in something cold, the heat between his legs going out like a flame in blowing breeze.

Then Yuuri tilts his head back, and Viktor is reassured by the steadiness of his gaze. He raises himself to his full height slowly, and presses a kiss—chaste, but languid—against Viktor's lips. He breathes in through his nose, an ardent noise, and as he pulls away whispers, "Love doesn't scare me, Viktor. It might be the only good thing in the world."

Viktor breathes there, against Yuuri's mouth, for a long moment.

"You've still got too many clothes on," Viktor says finally, and feels the curve of Yuuri's lips against his cheek.

"You too," Yuuri whispers back, and then pulls away and thrusts his costume down his thighs. Viktor watches him with pants undone, prick straining against his underwear. Yuuri's belly is soft, his skin smooth—his dance strap leaves the pert curves of his bum exposed. After a moment, he slides the strap down as well. The weight of his half-hard cock swings heavily between his legs, presented on a thick thatch of black hair. He’s beautiful in just about every way a person can be.

"Oh," Viktor hisses, and almost unthinkingly presses a hand to his own arousal. "You're…"

Yuuri smiles. "You too." He returns to Viktor, presses his thumbs into his waistband and tugs down. Viktor's pants and underwear fall to his knees, and are subsequently kicked off. Viktor isn't sure were his socks go, but he never really thinks about that anyway. The belt clinks loudly against the floor as Viktor steps out of his clothes, and then Yuuri nudges them into a corner as he takes Viktor's hand.

"Come on," he says, and Viktor follows him—watching the way the moonlight filtering in through the windows lands on his naked shoulders. They reach the pair of sliding doors that leads into the back, and the Onsen. Yuuri pulls him through the doors and down three steps, onto smooth but textured stones that are pleasantly cool and damp underneath Viktor's feet.

Yuuri slides easily into the water, hardly making a ripple. It takes him in down to the hips, just covering the cloud of black hair between his thighs. He holds out his arms to Viktor, clearly an offer to stabilize him as he steps in—an offer which Viktor accepts, griping his forearms and stepping down carefully, finding the step with first one foot and then the other, and then taking the shorter step down into the bottom of the spring. He purposefully drops himself a little too heavily onto the spring's floor, sending him falling into Yuuri, who catches him against his chest.

"Oops," Viktor murmurs, and Yuuri smirks in a knowing way, but doesn't say anything; only pushes the now-damp strands of hair over Viktor's forehead behind his ear.

"Hi," Yuuri whispers then, and kisses him softly. Their hips are pressed together, their bodies jostled close by the swaying water. Viktor feels him, _Yuuri_ , that hot and yearning part of him, nestle between his thighs. Yuuri tilts his head back to look into his eyes and say, "I don't think I've ever seen your left eye."

Viktor, helpless against the bubble of laughter that rises in his throat, releases it. It echoes, joyous, around the yard with its high fences and stone walkway, and then up towards the stars, or whatever it is that looks like them. Yuuri laughs with him, until it dies down to just the sound of their breath whispering between them. Yuuri presses his nose into Viktor's neck, traces it down along his collarbone and then around his nipple. Viktor's breath speeds up.

"Sit on the wall," says Yuuri, pressing him back towards the side of the Onsen, and Viktor does—boosts himself up on the seat to sit on the wall, legs in the water, knees spread. Yuuri stands between them and seals his mouth over Viktor's nipple. Viktor tosses his head back, feels his hands curl around the side of the pool and his toes scrape along the stone seat. Yuuri's tongue is hot, the suction of his mouth exquisite.

"I haven't—" Viktor gasps, presses his hand against the back of Yuuri's head. "I haven't done anything like this in—in thirty years."

Yuuri pauses in his ministrations to look up at him—his pupils are wide, his cinnamon-sugar eyes have gone deep and dark. Viktor waits for him to speak, but he never does—he lowers himself again, this time curling onto his knees on the seat between Viktor's feet and bowing his head over his lap. Viktor huffs, surprised, as Yuuri takes him in his mouth. His hands slide up the insides of Viktor's thighs, soft, stroking; spreading his legs further. His hair is damp, and tickles Viktor's stomach when he goes down. Viktor keens, an embarrassing and immutable sound.

The silence of the yard stretches on in counterpoint to the rushing in Viktor's ears—he can hear his own heartbeat thundering in his head, and at the same time the calm, quiet sound of the water lapping very slightly against the edge of the spring. The sound of Yuuri's mouth is obscene, unsubtle and desperately arousing—the sounds coming out of Viktor's throat are low and revelatory, pitched into a needy octave that shoots up towards the silent sky and mingles with the flowers rustling in the trees.

It's always spring in this place—and the cherry blossoms are always in bloom.

As orgasm thrills in his belly, Viktor tries to pull away—or at least pull Yuuri up, but Yuuri is steadfast. He puts a hand, flat and firm, against Viktor's thigh to keep him there—thumb digging in, the youth-fat of Viktor's skin pillowing to the press of his broad fingers. The other arm reaches around behind, pressing against Viktor's tailbone, dragging him close, his face buried frantically between Viktor's thighs. Viktor shudders and arches, his toes coming to points against Yuuri's back.

"Oh," Viktor hisses, unable to stop himself this close. " _Oh_ —"

A guttural sound leaves Yuuri's throat as Viktor begins to come. His ministrations come to a stop slowly, and he holds Viktor in his mouth until his shuddering stops—then lets him fall away gently, and trails long lines of kisses over Viktor's thighs.

Viktor, feeling wanton, slips back down into the water with him. Yuuri, who is still kneeling on the seat, sits back on his heels and presses their foreheads together, pushes his nose into Viktor's cheek. Viktor reaches down into Yuuri's lap and finds his cock, circles his thumb around the water-slick head of it. Yuuri shudders against him, and it is somehow the most intimate thing Viktor has ever experienced.

"Tell me what you want," Viktor says, eager. He flicks his tongue underneath Yuuri's chin, then drops a kiss there as well. "Please, anything."

Yuuri gasps against his neck, fingers swiping down the sides of Viktor’s face and then behind, to cradle the back of his head. He rises back onto his knees, turns Viktor’s head up with fingers in his hair—Viktor follows him, their lips colliding frantically, until they are both standing. Yuuri pulls him down an incline of the natural topography and into a deeper portion of the spring, hands clasped into the meat of his thighs. The water goes over their navels and laps at Yuuri’s waist—Viktor, several inches taller, only has water up to his hips, but it’s enough. Yuuri pulls him close, and Viktor feels him slide between his thighs—a ragged gasp leaves his throat as he understands.

“Yes,” he breathes into Yuuri’s ear, consent and enthusiasm. He tenses his thighs, presses them together. It was like this, the first time Viktor was fucked. By a boy from the ballet Academy—Viktor spent three months sneaking off to his dorm room in the middle of the night, skittering past Yakov and Lilia’s bedroom and down onto the street, running the three blocks to the dorms and trying not to slip on ice and snow. It was inexperienced touches and the hot feeling of another man against him for the first time—and it was so long ago that Viktor can scarcely recall the boy’s face, even in this place designed to make memories stark.

Yuuri mouths at his neck as he moves himself between Viktor’s thighs, and Viktor feels like a being made of pure sensation. All he wants to know are Yuuri’s hands on the backs of his thighs, pulling him in. The only thing he needs for sustenance is the water in the Onsen, and the heat from Yuuri’s body against his own. It won’t make him come again—it’s not that kind of stimulation. He could get hard again, if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. He has no need for it. He wants to feel Yuuri’s arms, Yuuri’s thighs, Yuuri’s mouth.

As he closes in on release, Yuuri’s movements become more frantic, even less elegant. The water sloshes up against the edges of the pool and into the edges—Viktor feels him swell between his thighs. Yuuri’s fingernails latch into his back and drag down, his grasp tightening. Viktor gasps.

“Yes,” he says, Yuuri’s hair latching into his lips and tongue. “Yes—oh, _yes_.”

Yuuri’s breath quickens; frantic, high. The sound he makes when he comes is undeniably gorgeous.

Their skin is stuck together with water, with sweat. It takes gentleness to disengage from Yuuri without causing discomfort, after several long moments spent pressed against him, feeling his belly heave with breath, the muscles in his arms quiver.

“You’re shaking,” Viktor whispers, putting distance between their chests so the cold air can circulate and calm their inflamed skin—but pressing his face near, his nose into the space by Yuuri’s eye, and then down the side of his nose, and then along his cheek.

“I’ll be fine,” Yuuri replies, and then leads them back onto a seat. Viktor falls into Yuuri’s lap, his arm over the back of his shoulders. Yuuri’s arms go to the small of his back, and over the peak of his knees which rise like islands out of the water, only slightly. Viktor looks at them, pale and smooth—unaged. Yuuri’s fingertips trail into the water. They’re quiet for a long moment.

“That,” Yuuri whispers, and then swallows. Viktor watches his apple bob from underneath his limp fringe, enthralled and helpless to it. He breathes for a moment more, then speaks again. “That’s been a fantasy of mine. For a long time.”

Viktor presses a smile into his shoulder, licks the salt away from his neck. “Sex in the hot spring?”

Yuuri is quiet for a long moment, his hand raising out of the water to trace a nonsense pattern on Viktor’s shoulder. After a moment spent in idle contemplation, he realizes that the pattern is a path along his freckles.

“Yeah,” Yuuri whispers after a moment, and there is something odd about his tone—but Viktor can’t place it, and after several more minutes, they rise from the bath. Viktor follows Yuuri back into the house, and thinks up some clothes onto his body—comfortable and large—as Yuuri roots around in his closet, pulls out a loose shirt and shorts. They spend an unsure moment, slightly awkward, staring at each other from opposite sides of the room.

“Do you think we could,” Viktor murmurs, “lay down together? It’s almost midnight and I…” He doesn’t know how to say _I just want to be held_. He’s never had to express something like that to another person before.

Yuuri’s eyes are tender. “Yes, of course.” He sits down on the bed, lays on his side with his head on a pillow, his hand under his head. He holds up the other arm and murmurs, “Come here.”

Viktor does, laying down facing Yuuri with his face tucked against his neck—warm skin, the smell of the Onsen, a little damp. His shirt clings to him with the residual wetness of the spring. It makes the space between them humid, but not unpleasant.

“Do you dream?” Viktor whispers, feeling his lashes hit Yuuri’s skin as he blinks. “When you fall asleep here?”

Yuuri traces the line of Viktor’s spine, his face thoughtful as his fingers move behind Viktor’s back, up between his shoulders and then back down to the waistband of his pants. He plays with the hem of Viktor’s shirt for a moment, then trails up under the shirt and continues his ministrations for a long moment. Viktor lets him, soothed.

“I don’t really know,” Yuuri whispers finally. “I never really remembered dreaming in real life, so I don’t pay attention to it, but…Sometimes I—I wake up remembering colors, or…sounds. But I don’t know if they’re dreams or memories. Or maybe it’s…all my brain can make of the real world, anymore. And I think that scares me more than the idea that I don’t dream.”

Viktor presses a hand to Yuuri’s neck, lets his fingers settle into the curve of his jaw and along the crisp line of his hair. Yuuri’s hand stops, splays wide between his shoulder blades, Viktor’s shirt bunched up around his wrist. It’s cool along Viktor’s back now, a chilly breeze playing along his skin, but he doesn’t move.

“I wish I could stay the night,” Viktor whispers. “I wish I knew what morning was like, here. I think maybe I wouldn’t be so afraid…if I knew I would wake up in this place and see the sun.”

Yuuri’s arms tighten around him. He takes in a great breath against Viktor’s hair.

“I wish I could wake up next to you,” Yuuri whispers, and Viktor closes his eyes against the emotion trying to spill from them—as he lays there, he hears the telltale beep of his sleep monitor in his ear, and feels himself begin to slip away.

* * *

Yuri Plisetsky is, to this day, striking. Despite having recently closed in on sixty years of age, his six-foot frame cuts a regal profile. The width of his shoulders, the cut of his jaw, gain him a unique quality even when surrounded by the crowds of European-featured men littering Saint Petersburg streets. That’s not even to say anything of his eyes, or his hair—platinum-grey and of a length that swings around his jaw, accentuates his neck.

He’s handsome enough to catch the eye of even young nurses—and Viktor enjoys watching them scuttle about themselves, asking him if he wants anything to drink, or if “his father” (Whom they assume Viktor is, for some bizarre reason, even though there are less than thirteen years between them) needs anything. It perhaps isn’t kind to glean so much amusement from such things, but Viktor doesn’t _get_ much amusement nowadays—at least, not outside of Hasetsu. One almost has to derive their pleasure from any resource that presents itself.

“How’s your husband?” Viktor asks, sly, once the nurses have stopped hovering. They’ve put him in the sunroom for the afternoon, because they’re worried about the amount of sunlight he’s getting. He’s sitting on a large, pink medical recliner, three pillows under his head and two blankets over his lap. Yura sits next to him, with his legs crossed in that elegant-but-careless fashion that he’d already perfected before puberty. He’s stirring jam into tea, which he offered Viktor but which Viktor refused.

“He’s not my husband,” Yura grunts.

“Your partner. Your lover. Your _man._ ”

Yura looks up from under his lashes, irritated and blushing. The stoicism of the man he loves has settled into Yura over the years—he’s calm now, and at times says little, but he is still the boy who once burst into tears and collapsed on the ice after winning his first Grand Prix. He is still wonderfully emotive, beautifully temperamental. Viktor envies him almost constantly—he has so much _life_ left.

“ _Otabek_ is fine,” Yura says, and wipes off the spoon he’s been using to stir. As he tries to squeeze the lid onto the top of his Styrofoam cup, he continues. “He’s doing fine.  He’s gone to Los Angeles to oversee a couple of recording sessions. I would normally go with him, but Klementina debuts at the end of the month and Vasily has a sprained ankle that he can’t walk on.” Yura glances out the window. “He’ll only be gone for two weeks. He’s coming back at the end of the month.”

“Do you miss him?” Viktor asks, feeling his expression soften. Yura and Otabek may have never married—not in the proper, legal sense. But they’ve been living together for the better part of four decades, and have been apart for long periods very seldom in that time. Otabek is a music producer—a trade he took up after a bad ACL injury in his mid-twenties that left him with a mild limp. Yura is to Viktor what Viktor once was to Yakov; successor and heir. They are homebodies, only traveling when Yura’s students go to compete or when Otabek must meet with his international clients, and even then traveling together.

Yura’s eyes peak out at him from underneath his heavy lashes, some nuanced emotion there. “Why do you think I’m visiting you, old man?”

Viktor smiles, though in his younger years he may have pouted. Yura was one of the very few people whose treatment of him did not change after the news of his diagnosis—at least not in the words he says. Sometimes, Viktor thinks he can tell what’s happening behind those eyes. They have always been Yura’s telltale feature. Viktor vividly remembers looking into them when Yura was a child and seeing all of that bright, brilliant longing—burning green ambition and hope that Yura constantly tried to pass off as anger or disdain.

Now, sometimes, all Viktor can see is pity. Although, currently, it’s a particular and strange flavor of defeat—because Yura has kept up a constant narrative of _You’ll pull through_ , in his own way, but it’s been several months since he’s had the time to visit Viktor, and Viktor knows what Yura is seeing now. There’s been a rapid decline in the last few months.

Nothing Viktor had said to Yuuri in Hasetsu had been a lie. He’s dying so _quickly_ now.                                                                                                                     

“They told me you’ve been put into a twilight town,” Yura tells him, flicking at the peeled-back tab of his cup lid. “You’ve been going there for a few months…they told me.”

“Yes,” says Viktor, shuffling under his blankets to pull them up over his shoulders. He’s always so cold nowadays, even with the sun shining directly on him in the middle of the day. “I have.”

Yura takes a moment to choose his words—he wiggles his foot and takes a sip of tea, and rips the tab off the lid. As he plays with it between his index and middle fingers, he says, “How do you…like it?”

Viktor thinks of Yuuri, and the eternal springtime of Hasetsu, and the warmth and smell of an ocean he’s never actually been to, and _Yuuri_.

“It’s nice,” he says eventually. “I like it.”

“That’s good,” says Yura, obviously uncomfortable and unsure of himself, but pushing on nonetheless. “Which…what’s it called? The twilight town.”

“Hasetsu,” Viktor says, after a brief internal debate. “It’s a little town on the sea.”

“I haven’t heard of that one.”

“Well…you wouldn’t have, since it’s Japanese.”

Yura’s eyebrows draw down and together, trying with all his might to push down the explosive reaction that Viktor knows lurks below the surface. “A Japanese town?”

Viktor drums his fingers on the antiseptic and artificial upholstery of the orthopedic recliner, bounces his toes inside his slippers, and eventually nods. “Yes.” He’s beginning to lose track of the conversation. He knows that they’re talking about Hasetsu and that Yura is upset, but he isn’t sure he understands why, and he also knows that the conversation hasn’t been going on for nearly long enough for him to have lost the thread, but such is the nature of disease.

“Why a Japanese town? Nobody you know is in Japan.”

“Nobody I know is in Russia.” He tilts his head to the side, meeting Yura’s and finding there the anger he expected, and also the sadness he expected. There is an added flavor of _fear_ that Viktor isn’t sure he understands. “Nobody else is dying, Yura.”

“That’s not fair,” says Yura immediately, in an echo of ancient adolescent rage long gone dormant. “You can’t just—Viktor. When people die, they aren’t buried on a different continent on a _whim_. You’re buried at _home_ , or close to it. This isn’t how things work. You can’t just—you can’t just decide to pass over into some _random Japanese twilight town_."

“I’m dying,” Viktor mutters. “Not moving house. I’ll still be here. It’s not like I’ll actually be in Japan. What difference does it make?”

“You sound just like Yakov,” Yura says after a moment, and he manages to make it sound like the gravest of insults. “ _Don’t bury me. Throw me in a ditch, float my body out to sea, put my corpse on a public bus_. I’ll never understand it. Don’t you care?”

“Care about what?” Viktor mumbles. “How I die?”

“The people you leave behind,” Yura snaps. “I mean—don’t you get it? There are people—people who love you. And who will miss you. You’ve lived your life like—like nobody cares, or like you don’t have anybody, and I don’t _understand_ it. Why do you want to die like that, too?”

Viktor lets his eyes trail over to the window. They’re about ten feet above the highest branches of a slowly-swaying ash tree. It’s become autumn, somehow, without Viktor knowing it. He remembers the eagerness with which he awaited the changing of leaves as a child, and the detached acknowledgement he grew into as an adult. Autumn meant competition, and crowds, and a lot of travel. It meant weeks’ worth of hotel stays and, later in life, half a dozen homesick kids trying to adjust to the rigors of professional skating.

This will, Viktor realizes all at once, be the last time he watches the leaves change.

“I met someone,” he murmurs, watching the branches on the ash tree dance. “In the—the twilight town. He’s…” He tries, and fails, to come up with a way to explain Yuuri. A man who seems more real and yet somehow less real every time Viktor thinks about him. A man whose existence Viktor has no concrete evidence of. More and more, he’s beginning to think that Yuuri, like Takeshi Nishigori’s daughters, is a figment accidentally thought into being by Viktor’s loneliness—and he isn’t even sure if it would matter, at this point, if he was.

“His name is Yuuri,” Viktor eventually says, and watches Yura’s eyes flash with something like recognition in the reflection off the window.

Yura opens his mouth several times, trying to find words.

“Sometimes I’m so scared that I can barely stand it,” Viktor whispers when Yura doesn’t, or can’t, reply. “But he’s helping me. And I want to be with him. God, I want to be with him more than—more than I’ve ever wanted to be with another person. I finally feel like I have someone who’s _mine,_ Yura. I’ve never felt that way before.” He looks back to Yura. “I’m seventy-three and I’ve just fallen in love for the first time. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but it’s…it’s happened. Please don’t hate me for it.”

“I…don’t,” says Yura, and his eyes are understanding. In that moment, Viktor feels like Yura is the experienced and worldly party in the conversation—and when it comes to love, Viktor supposes that he is. Being with the same man for two thirds of his life, living with him all that time. Sharing a bed with him for forty years. Yuri Plisetsky has forgotten more about that kind of love—that deep and settled and comfortable kind, the kind where you have a person who _belongs_ to you, and you know you belong to them—than Viktor has ever known.

“He’s dead?” Yura asks, after the conversation has digested a little. He doesn’t look so angry anymore. Viktor can’t quite remember why he was upset in the first place, anymore.

“No,” Viktor says. “Or maybe—well, it depends on what you mean by dead. He says he can’t…that when he isn’t on the system, he isn’t anywhere. I think he’s in a coma, or maybe—”

Yura then moves very suddenly, and in a very strange way. He goes from sitting half-slumped against his chair, a position he took up after his brief rant, to the precise and rigid posture of an ex-dancer, the line of his spine perfect like the line of the bamboo switch with which Lilia used to swipe at their feet and arms and legs. His eyes go wide, unseeing for a brief moment, like he’s looking at something only he can see.

“What’s his family name?” Yura asks. “Yuuri what?”

“Katsuki,” Viktor says, perplexed and unsure how the conversation has arrived at this place.

Yura relaxes, but only enough to pull out his phone from his hip pocket. He scrolls through it feverishly, looking for something. As he goes, he mumbles, “I had a feeling—” under his breath, several times, more insistent with each repetition.

Finally, he thrusts the phone into Viktor’s hand. It takes Viktor’s eyes a moment to focus, even with the text size scaled as far up as it will go.

 _Family of Yuuri Katsuki Announce Passing-Over Date_.

“This is a passing-over announcement,” Viktor mumbles, frowning at the phone. “Why is the news reporting on this? Is he…”

“Keep reading,” says Yura, with a strange tone to his voice. Viktor does.

_The parents of Japanese figure skater Yuuri Katsuki announced on Friday afternoon that their son will pass over this month. Katsuki, who stunned the world with his record-shattering skates two years ago at the Olympics, was hospitalized last year following a training accident which left him comatose. Despite treatment by some of the best doctors Japan has to offer, Katsuki’s condition has not improved. After sixteen months in a coma, Katsuki has announced his intention to pass over via the Fukuoka General Hospital Twilight System._

_The Katsuki family wishes to keep the name of the twilight town where Yuuri will be residing private, for obvious reasons, but welcomes messages and well-wishes._

_Yuuri Katsuki would have turned twenty-four this year._

The article goes on to give contact information for a charitable organization taking donations in Yuuri’s name, in lieu of flowers, but Viktor stops reading.

“He’s…” Viktor says, but stops immediately because he doesn’t know what to say. There are so many things he _could_ say. _He’s young. His life was so short. He’s_ deciding _to die? He’s_ so young _—_

“There’s something else you should see,” Yura tells him with uncharacteristic gentleness. He slips the phone out of Viktor’s loose grasp, taps around for a moment longer, and slides it back over.

The video is titled **_[_** ** _勝生_** **_勇利_** ** _]_** _KATSUKI YUURI JAPANESE NATIONALS EXHIBITION “STAY CLOSE TO ME”._

“He only skated it once,” Yura says softly. “At Japanese Nationals, a few years ago. He had a different exhibition skate for the rest of the season. Someone asked him why he changed it and he didn’t explain why, but it was shortly after—” Yura takes an odd pause, like his words got stuck halfway up his throat. “He only skated it once. And it was just after you announced your diagnosis.” There is stony silence for a moment. Viktor watches Yuuri toss himself into a triple Lutz on the little screen, a few years younger and a few pounds lighter.

Viktor has spent hours imagining the wrinkles that might be on Yuuri’s face. If his hair is grey or silver or white. What the lines around his eyes might look like after a lifetime of laughing and smiling.

This is Yuuri as he really is. The lines never had a chance to form.

“You didn’t know any of this, did you?” Yura asks. As Yuuri strikes the final pose on the ice—to uproarious applause and exaltations in Japanese from the commentators—Viktor slowly shakes his head.

“No,” he whispers. “I didn’t.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you've had a good first week of 2018. Still writing '2017' on everything like I am? Yuuuup. Good shit.
> 
> Final chapter next week, and then probably back into obscurity for me, at least for a little while. The semester is starting up and I'm having some Creative Ennui related to that and also just life in general, but I'll be trying to write _something_ , don't you kids worry.
> 
> As always, I'm LavenderProse on Ao3. Check that out if you're interested! Have a great day, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter.


	3. Three

Viktor lies in bed for a long while the next night he wakes up in Hasetsu. Makkachin whines at the door, pawing to be let free.  It isn’t to be let outside, or for food. He wants to go to the rink. He wants to see Yuuri. Viktor knows this, and he can’t bring himself to move until, finally, Makkachin hops onto his chest and rumbles out a bark that could shake the windows.

_Stop feeling sorry for yourself_ , is the clear message there. Viktor listens, albeit grudgingly.

In the rink, Viktor waits to be noticed. It takes a moment, because Yuuri is focusing on a complicated figure. Viktor still doesn’t know who taught him figures, or why. He’s too young to have been required to do them in competition, and most coaches do without them nowadays. Whoever taught Yuuri must have been either very old or very traditional in their ways.

When Yuuri looks up and finally sees him, he comes to a halt. His free leg touches down hard, the sound of his boot against the ice echoing for a full half minute afterwards. There’s quiet and tension, and Yuuri doesn’t move. Viktor maintains eye contact, and tosses his hair, and tries not to give in to a sulk or tears. Both tug at him, almost irresistible.

“Viktor,” Yuuri says finally. “You…your hair.”

Viktor trails a hand up behind his back and grips onto the end of one long lock of hair that has settled against the curve of his spine, twirling it around his finger and tugging it just taut enough to straighten his own posture. As he pulls down, his knuckles brush his flank. He hadn’t even noticed the length of his hair.

When had it been so long? He was seventeen or eighteen when he had cut it up to the shoulder during a Parisian heatwave that saw him openly suffering under the weight of his own hair. And it was his twenty-first birthday (Or was it his twenty-second?) that saw him slashing off the rest in a fit of anger at his mother and Yakov and the entire _world_. He remembers inches and inches of platinum hair on a bathroom floor; his mother’s angry, bitter tears; the look of pity and sadness that Yakov gave him when he walked into the rink the next day with his hair choppily cut to his jaw. Yakov took him to the barber that same day, where they cut off an extra three inches and somehow managed to make the asymmetry of the whole thing look purposeful.

He debuted his new hairstyle at the next competition to an almost orgiastic response from his fans. And he _smiled_. And he _waved_.

“You’re so…young, like this,” Yuuri says, finally moving to slide towards Viktor.

“Does it make you uncomfortable?”

Yuuri’s lips quirk in a way that isn’t a smile—it’s a bemused expression, not born of any real amusement or happiness. “No, I just…I’m wondering…why? How…old…?”

“I’m seventy-three,” Viktor tells him, pulling tight on his own hair.

“You know what I mean,” Yuuri whispers. Frustrated, confused, still gliding in an almost meandering fashion in Viktor’s direction. Like he isn’t sure he actually wants to be closer, or like he doesn’t know what he’ll do when he gets where he’s going.

“I’m _seventy-three_ ,” Viktor says again. “I’m fifty years older than you, do you know that? I’m old enough to be your _grandfather_.”

Viktor waits for Yuuri to defend himself, or at least give out an excuse; try to explain himself. However, Yuuri has the grace not to attempt any of this. He straightens up against the brunt of Viktor’s accusation, back straight and arms resting carefully at his sides. His face betrays his surprise and chagrin, but he doesn’t shrink away from recrimination.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Yuuri asks, eerily soft and quiet. Yuuri is always a soft-spoken individual, but now it has an undertone of harshness, like a fruit that has started to rot from the inside.

“Because I—I _touched_ you,” Viktor says. He throws himself forward, his hands slamming onto the boards. “We—you let me—I _made love_ to you and the last time that happened was—the last time I went to bed with another person, the last time I let someone see me that way, was before you were _born_ , Yuuri Katsuki. Doesn’t that—"

“No,” Yuuri says. “It doesn’t bother me. Why should it? We’re dying, anyway. We’re dying and soon it won’t matter if I’m twenty-three or seventy-three or one hundred and three. Why should it _matter_?”

“Because you’re so _young_ ,” Viktor says. He reaches over the boards and takes Yuuri’s face. He’s taller than Viktor now, with Viktor being somehow in this form, and from this angle there are nuances to his face that Viktor has never noticed before. Something in the eyes, the line of his jaw. Viktor is angry, so _fucking angry_ , and he can’t make himself stop feeling things for this man. “God, you’re so _fucking young_. You have your whole life ahead of you.”

“No,” Yuuri says, gripping onto Viktor’s wrists. They are slight, and almost brittle, and Yuuri’s hands wrap completely around them. “No, I don’t. I’m dying, just the same as you.”

“You’re _choosing_ to die,” Viktor snaps, and his fingers tighten into Yuuri’s hair. “You don’t have a disease. You’re not—not wasting away. You have life left.”

“I’m a body in a bed,” Yuuri whispers. “What kind of life is that?”

Viktor’s teeth grit, and his arms tense. He doesn’t know what he wants to do with them. Eventually, helpless, he rips them away, out of Yuuri’s hands, and turns his back. Tears leak out of his eyes without his permission, falling like water drops over the lip of an overfull glass. He drags a hand back through his hair, feeling strands of it sticking to his face with the tears. When he finds a bench and sits down on it, head in his hands, he lets it fall over his face like so many curtains—shielding him.

He hears Yuuri’s skates as he crosses the ice, the click of his blades on the metal of the rink threshold. Feels his warmth as he nears, and then his hands—one on either side of his lap as he kneels, and then pushes one long curtain of Viktor’s hair to the side and over his shoulder.

“You’re crying,” Yuuri whispers.

Viktor shoves his hand out of his face, maybe a little too hard. “I’m mad!”

The silence in the rink rings in Viktor’s ears. Yuuri sits back on his heels, putting distance between them, but doesn’t move away. He waits until Viktor finishes crying—and it takes awhile. Decades of grief—grief both recent and old, scarred, pour out of him in those moments. Yuuri’s regular breathing and the warmth of him on Viktor’s shins are steadfast.

When Viktor finally emerges, pulling his hair back and bringing it all over his shoulder, Yuuri closes in again. His hands go to Viktor’s knees; his face fills Viktor’s vision.

And even after it all, Viktor wants him. Wants him in that myriad of different ways that he thinks can only mean that he’s in love.

“You know who I am,” Viktor says. “And not—not just because you looked me up. You knew from the moment I walked in.”

Yuuri looks down at Viktor’s lap, his hands tightening over the back of Viktor’s hands. He takes in a deep breath, in through the nose and out through the mouth. Viktor can feel the slightest, barest tremble in his fingers.

“I did,” Yuuri whispers. Viktor breathes out, slow. He doesn’t know if he actually expected Yuuri to deny it, but he’s relieved beyond measure that he didn’t try. “I, um…wasn’t totally sure, at first, but when you walked in—I knew it had to be you. And I didn’t ever think I would be in that position. Meeting you. Or, at least, meeting you like that? As equals. Or as…both of us young, and whole, and…I thought it must be fate. Out of all the twilight towns, you chose Hasetsu. And out of all the places you could have gone, you—you came here. To this ice rink. I thought that maybe it was a second chance at life or maybe just…a chance to know you. As a person and not just as—as a face on a screen.” He doesn’t look at Viktor’s face—but he takes his hands, and holds them together between his own.

“You were younger than…than this, than the way you are now,” Yuuri says, “when I saw you for the first time. My ballet teacher, Minako, she was showing me these…old videos of figure skaters. I think it was so demonstrate balance, or something. And there you were. It was the year you won your first Olympics. You skated this program, and it—it spoke to me like I don’t think anything has ever spoken to me. Like I don’t think anything else ever will.” He looks up, finally, and in the cinnamon sugar depths of his eyes is something that Viktor can somehow physically _feel_ , and it feels like all of his complex and nameless motion reflected straight back at him.

“I fell in love with you then,” Yuuri says, confirming with his words what shows in his eyes. “But it was…the idea of you. I knew, obviously, that you’d retired long before I was even born—that you were old enough to be my grandfather. But I looked at you in those videos and I saw an ideal and I _wanted_ —” He sighs, and leans down, presses his forehead into Viktor’s knees. “I don’t know what I wanted, but I knew it was impossible. So I threw myself into the idea that maybe I could satisfy myself by _being_ you. And I never got very far with that, but for a long time…I chased that. You were my dream.”

Viktor, despite himself, gasps.

“But then my dream died,” Yuuri whispers. “It died in a really sudden, violent way and I…when they first put me on the system, I didn’t know what to do. I’d lost everything. I was alone for months, just…feeling _sorry_ for myself, and then—” Yuuri lifts Viktor’s hands, kisses his fingers. “Then you walked in and I thought to myself— _this is my second chance_. And I should have told you, I know, and I’m _sorry_. But I thought if you knew, there was no way—there was no way we’d be able to know each other on equal footing. Know each other the way I wanted to. So I—I pretended. And I’m so sorry. I know you don’t trust me now and I understand. But please, don’t hate me.”

Those eyes are pleading, now. So deep and complex that Viktor feels like he’s drowning.

“Yuuri,” he whispers. “I don’t hate you. I’m angry…and _confused_ …but I don’t hate you.”

Yuuri breathes out, shakily. “Okay. Okay.”

For a moment, neither moves. They don’t really know what to say. Viktor’s shoulders shift underneath his coat, uneasily awkward. Yuuri sits back on his heels again.

“I’m, um…passing over,” Yuuri tells him.

“I know.” Viktor chances reaching out a hand, touching Yuuri’s hair. “I know, and I hate that term. Call it what it is. You’re dying. You’ve chosen to die.”

“What else can I do?” Yuuri murmurs. “I’m in a coma. One step above brain dead. They have no idea if I’ll ever wake up, or if I’m even capable of it.”

“But you’re so _young,_ ” Viktor says again. “You’re only twenty-three, I mean…Christ.”

“I am. I am young. My brain is sick, probably irreparably sick, but my body is perfectly healthy. I could go on like this for…years and years. Decades. Just lying in a bed, unable to talk or move. My parents will die. My friends will forget about me. And I’ll still be lying in a bed, waiting for my heart to finally give out. What kind of _life_ is that, Viktor?”

“I don’t know,” Viktor whispers, tears dripping again. They hit Yuuri’s hands and slide down in between his fingers. “I don’t know.”

Yuuri kisses his hands again. “I’m passing over. And when you do, too…I’ll be here. And maybe then it won’t matter to you…how long we lived. Maybe we can have equal footing.” He leans up then, and drops a sweet kiss onto Viktor’s lips. The kiss tastes like salt, from Viktor’s tears, and like cold, and like a promise.

“I love you, Viktor Nikiforov,” Yuuri whispers. “I have for all my life.”

* * *

Engelstadt is a Swiss twilight town. Viktor has known about it for several years. He has been putting off coming here even before his diagnosis. Visitor centers for the twilight towns are not hard to come by, especially in a city as big as Saint Petersburg, and it would have been easy. But there was always something—he isn’t sure what—keeping him from it. Then, post-diagnosis, it was a reminder of something he didn’t want to think about.

Now, of course, it doesn’t matter. He’s been uploaded onto the system, himself. There’s nothing to run away from.

In a twilight town where one has no residence—and, apparently, it’s not uncommon for people to have multiple residences in multiple towns—they are dropped into a kind of transitional area. A train station, of sorts, without the train. He never saw the transitional area in Hasetsu; his first time, he asked the programmer to drop him right onto the beach, and he was. Here, in Engelstadt, he comes to himself sitting on a sort of wooden bench somewhat reminiscent of a pew, in a large hall with lofted ceilings and marble floors—and Makkachin is there.

It’s all the same system, Viktor supposes. There’s no reason why Makkachin wouldn’t be there.

He emerges from the transitional area and into a bright orange sunset. Engelstadt is a mountainous town. Twilight towns, by definition, are a place where people would want to spend their eternity after death—and the wide, unobstructed views and crisp air of Engelstadt are a popular choice. Unlike Hastetsu, where it is eternally spring and the cherry blossoms never wilt, Engelstadt is a wintery town. The air is cool and brisk; snow crunches underfoot. Viktor finds himself in a parka as he walks, almost without thinking about it.

Just outside the transitional area is a kiosk—a news agent of sorts, identifiable by the word “ASSISTANCE” on its façade. A warmly-dressed impression manages the kiosk, and smiles at him as he approaches. The differences between them and Yuuko are stark. There is something artificial about this impression—human-like enough to stave off extreme uncanny, but not quite enough to give the impression of genuine humanity. Viktor quickly learns from them where he needs to be, and takes off rapidly in that direction.

The houses have a Bavarian influence that reinforces the idea that one is in Switzerland, despite the twilight towns not really belonging to a specific country. It’s quaint, and Viktor is surprised that this is the kind of place where a person like Christophe Giacometti would want to spend his eternity. But he also knows that Chris went through many different phases in life. The man Chris was when they were in their twenties was not the man he became with more years and experience. The passage of time turned him into a man who could appreciate the finer, and quieter, things in life.

Viktor knocks on the door of a double-story house at the end of a row, cozily encapsulated by a gathering of trees. The sun is making its last stand over the peak of the mountains as Chris opens the door. His eyes go wide behind his glasses.

“Viktor,” he says. It takes a moment for the shock to pass, but once it does he smiles wide. “Viktor! Viktor Nikiforov! Oh my God, what are you doing here?”

Viktor opens his mouth, trying to explain, but nothing save a vague and very quiet croak emerges. Christophe’s face softens from excited and surprised to something gentler. Inherently understanding, somehow, in that way he always had. He reaches across the threshold and brings Viktor into a hug. “Of all the people I expected to be on my doorstep, it was never you. But I’m glad. Please, come in.”

On the inside, the house is just as Viktor expected it to be—and yet, completely different. It is, indeed, the Zurich flat where Viktor once wiled away an entire summer with Christophe. But it is also parts of a place Viktor has never seen before. It feels somehow lighter, like there’s more air in the place than Viktor remembers. It’s a home that breathes comfort—there are blankets on the furniture, soft rugs on the floor, and mementoes of life on display.

Christophe’s husband Markus is sitting on a stool in the kitchen. Viktor almost doesn’t recognize him. He was balding, last time Viktor saw him, and his posture was beginning to develop a distinct hunch. Now he is again the young man he was when Chris first introduced them.

Come to think, Viktor isn’t sure he’s ever seen Markus so young. He was several years older than himself and Christophe—and the stress of an important job had sent his hair graying before its time.

“We have a visitor,” Chris reveals, and Markus smiles as he stands up from the counter.

“I see that,” he says, as he makes his way across the open plan of the living area. He exchanges a short hug with Viktor, a squeeze and a pat on the back. Over Viktor’s shoulder, a look passes between husbands—Viktor doesn’t know what it means, but the message is obviously received as intended. Markus pats Viktor’s shoulder and says, “It’s good to see you,” before exiting towards the back of the house, maybe to an office or bedroom.

Viktor stands in the middle of the living area for a moment, still in his coat, his palm cradling the back of Makkachin’s head. Even though he very purposefully came here tonight to work through the confusing spiral of emotions in his mind, he isn’t sure what to say now that he’s arrived.

“I was sad to hear about your diagnosis,” Christophe says, leaning against the back of a plush chair. “We don’t get a lot of news from outside, but every once in a while—something comes through. Something the system deems…salient, for one reason or another. It must know that news about you is important to me.”

As Christophe sits down, pushing his glasses up his nose and tugging a piece of lint of his sweater, Viktor is hit with one of those moments of soft, friendly affection that he’s seldom experienced in the years since Chris died. There were very few people in Viktor’s life he could call friends and Yura, precious as he is to Viktor, has never been someone who inspired great amounts of gentle emotion. Chris could be lewd and unsubtle, and there were long bouts of time during their friendship when they didn’t speak for one reason or another, but they always came back together.

Chris was a lot of things to Viktor. Friend, lover, brother.

Confessor.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” Chris asks, leaning his arms on his thighs and knitting his fingers together between his knees. “Or anything? You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. I just think it might help.”

Viktor drifts towards the sofa adjacent to Christophe’s seat and drops heavily onto it. Makkachin sits at his feet, leaning against the length of his leg.

“They told me I had six months,” Viktor says, after a moment. “Five months ago.”

“I’m sorry, darling,” says Christophe. He places a hand on Viktor’s knee. “It’s difficult. I imagine it’s even more difficult when it’s…slow, like that. We were lucky. We went fast. I’m told that if the EMTs hadn’t had the equipment to upload us onsite, we wouldn’t have made it onto the system.”

Viktor, despite himself, nods. “That’s…how I understand it happened, yes.” He glances over his shoulder, trying to see if Markus is nearby. He appears to have honored Christophe’s wishes and made himself scarce. Not that Viktor thought he wouldn’t have; Markus was—is—an earnest person.

“Markus was driving,” Viktor says, not quite looking Chris in the eyes. “That day, when you…”

“Yes,” says Chris. “He was.”

“Were you ever angry? Did you ever…hate him? Just a little?”

Christophe’s gaze goes to the window for a moment, staring through it at the waving trees. Viktor waits patiently, warming his hands in Makkachin’s fur.

“It was raining,” Chris says, and he looks away from the trees and down at his hands, where he watches himself pick at a nail. His expression isn’t easily readable, but one might call it a grimace. “I’d had three glasses of wine at dinner. Large glasses. I knew I couldn’t drive. Markus’ night vision wasn’t so good anymore, but I told him to drive. _It’s only ten minutes_ , I said, _and you’ve done it hundreds of times_. But the pavement was wet, and it made it difficult to see the lines on the road. Markus didn’t realize that he had crossed over into the wrong lane until we saw the truck. And by then it was too late.”

Viktor sighs, squeezes his eyes closed. The truck driver walked away from the crash—so much higher up than Chris and Markus that the only injuries he sustained were minor whiplash and a broken leg.

“He was so angry at himself,” Chris says, shaking his head in small, jerky movements that Viktor isn’t even sure he realizes he’s making. “I couldn’t even think about being angry at him because he was being _so hard_ on himself. He said to me, he said… _If it had just been me, I would have been able to deal with it. But it was you. I killed my own husband. How does someone live with themselves after that_.”

Viktor asks, “What did you…say to him?”

Chris smiles. It’s a private smile, like something that isn’t quite meant for public consumption. But Viktor isn’t necessarily the general public.

“Something horribly cliché, and maybe untrue,” says Chris, shrugging his shoulders. “But it did the trick. He started to come out of it.”

Viktor raises an eyebrow and tilts his head, prompting. Chris chuckles again, and this time it’s almost embarrassed.

“I said… _I wouldn’t have wanted to live without you anyway_.” He rolls his eyes. “I’m not sure I meant it. At least…not in the traditional sense. I wasn’t _happy_ to have died. Few people ever really are. I was in my sixties and I had—I had a _lot_ of good years left, Vitya. I could have lived without him. I would have worked past it. But then _he_ would have been alone here. Nobody he knows has passed over yet. He would have been completely alone until his parents died. Or me, whichever came first. And I think about him being alone in this place for _decades_ —because this is a wonderful place, Vitya, and it’s changing the world. But it can be such a lonely place, if you don’t have someone you love to share it with. And when I think of him _all alone_ , just waiting for someone else to die…God, it makes me so sad.”

Viktor swallows around the lump in his throat.

“So I guess,” says Chris, swiping his palms over the tops of his thighs, “that’s why I wasn’t—why I _couldn’t_ —be mad at him.”

Chris leans back, crossing his ankle over his knee, and surreptitiously swipes a thumb under his eye—making like he’s scratching an itch rather than clearing a tear. “Then again, it could have just been my own guilt that stopped me from being angry.”

“Guilt over what?”

Christophe shuffles his shoulders, vaguely uncomfortable. “I was drunk that night. If I hadn’t drank so much wine…”

“You can’t think like that.”

Chris smiles. “I know. That’s what I told Markus.” He shifts, and with him shifts the air in the room—focus on Viktor now, as Christophe rests his chin on his hand and says, “Your turn to share. If you’re ready.”

Viktor picks a nondescript piece of wall, vaguely over Chris’ shoulder, and tells it, “…I met someone.”

“Oh, it’s a _boy_ ,” Chris chuckles, leaning far forward in his seat. “A boy, a boy. It’s always a boy. I feel twenty-one again. Tell me.”

“He’s dead,” Viktor whispers. “Or…he will be, soon.”

“Oh, honey,” Chris sighs.

“We’re the only thing each other has in this place,” Viktor whispers. “And I’m terrified. I’ve never been that much to another person. I don’t know _how_ to be…how to be.”

“Vitya.” The tone of Christophe’s voice makes Viktor look at him, and something in his face has shifted. There is a certain determination there now; a quality that says Chris knows exactly what he has to say, and he’s going to say it. “I think that maybe…you want me to say what I used to, when we were young. I think maybe you want me to say something like _this too shall pass_. But that’s—I can’t do that anymore. We’ve gone through one life and now we’re onto the next—and in this life, things work on an entirely different set of rules. Time doesn’t work the same way, and you can just _think_ and have things you never even dreamed of having. And things that used to matter _so much_ , like how much life we’ve experienced or how much money we’ve made—it doesn’t _matter_. It’s death, Vitya. It’s called the great equalizer for a reason.”

Chris gets up, and crosses to where Viktor sits. He squeezes himself between Viktor and the arm of the couch, wrapping him in an embrace. Viktor feels very young again, all at once—like it’s the summer after his first Olympics, and Chris’ hair is blond and his own is long, and neither of them knows that they don’t have as much time on Earth as they think they will.

“You love him?” says Chris.

“I…think so,” says Viktor, resting his head on Chris’ shoulder. “I’m honestly not sure what love feels like, and sometimes it hurts so badly that I can’t—”

“Then it’s love,” Chris murmurs. “Only love hurts like that. It’s the worst pain you’ll ever feel when it’s something you struggle against—but it’s the greatest pleasure in the world when you give into it.”

Viktor gazes at Chris in considering silence. He isn’t used to his friend offering such poetic advice. But then, it’s been a long time since they’ve talked like this. Chris has died since they talked like this.

“You need someone, Vitya,” Chris tells him. “Eternity is a long time.

“Eternity,” Viktor whispers. “I can’t even imagine.” He pats his knee for Makkachin, who hops up onto the sofa with them, front legs and head in Viktor’s lap. Viktor plays with his tags, just to distract himself.

“What do you think…” Viktor inhales deep, sighs it out. “Do you think God…is disappointed in us? If there is a heaven that we were supposed to…do you think…have we turned our backs on Him, do you think?”

Christophe sighs, and clicks his tongue slowly—a thinking habit of his that Viktor almost forgot he had. Viktor, patient, slides his fingernail along the keyring on Makkachin’s collar.

“I think,” says Chris, squeezing Viktor’s shoulder, “That a place like this…a place that takes away so much fear, gives so much happiness? I don’t think God could be angry about it existing. If He truly is benevolent and gentle…I think it’s what He would want.” For a moment, the room is heavy with what’s been said—and also with what hasn’t. Then, with a shift of shoulders, the spell breaks and Chris says, “But that’s just one lapsed Catholic’s opinion. Who _knows_ what the Orthodox would have to say.”

Viktor allows himself to chuckle.                                                                                        

Chris stands up from the sofa, stretches his arms above his head and says, “Anyway! You’re staying for dinner. It’s not an option, considering we were just about to sit down when you got here. I’ll go tell Markus to get some wine from the cellar.” He’s wandering in the vague direction of the hallway as he says this—but before he disappears, he turns back and says, “Vitya?”

“Hmm?” Viktor responds, scratching behind Makkachin’s ears now.

“You should tell your boy what you just told me. He deserves to hear it.”

Viktor nods. “I will.”

* * *

“Thank you for coming with me.”

Yura doesn’t look away from the window he’s staring out of, but he does nod in recognition of Viktor’s words, and after a moment says, “You’ve thanked me about a dozen times since we got on the plane, Viktor. It’s not like I would have let you do this by yourself.”

Viktor smiles out his own window—the buildings and people of Fukuoka passing by quickly. The ride from the airport to the hospital is only twenty minutes, and the courtesy shuttle picked them up promptly after their plane touched down, but the exhaustion of the previous nine hours’ plane ride weighs on him heavily. He feels himself listing further and further with every bump the van bounces over.

“When will Otabek’s flight come in?” Viktor asks, blinking back the sleep that is trying to claim him. If he falls asleep now, he won’t be in any sort of condition to talk to anybody when they get to the hospital, and he needs to. There isn’t very much time.

“Tomorrow,” says Yura. He knots his hands together in his lap, thumbs shifting over each other restlessly. It is the only real sign of unease he shows. “He’s getting on a plane in LA this afternoon; he’ll be in Tokyo in the morning. I still don’t understand why he needs to be here.”

“Because,” Viktor says, “you’ll need someone to go home with you. I don’t want you traveling alone, after what’s going to happen.”

“I’m not a child,” Yura tells him, with only a shadow of the vitriol he might have spoken it with as a much younger man. “I don’t need a hand to hold.”

Viktor places his gaze on Yura’s face and waits, patiently, for him to look back. When he finally does, Viktor says, “I want you to have one.”

Yura swallows visibly, his throat bobbing. The fine muscles in his neck tighten and make the clenching of his jaw obvious. He turns frontwards, keeping his gaze past the driver’s head and out the windshield for the rest of the drive to the hospital, which only last about five more minutes. When they get out of the car, it’s Yura who mans the handles of Viktor’s wheelchair, and Viktor thinks that he perhaps feels the slightest of squeezes on his shoulder as Yura is maneuvering him towards the entryway.

Immediately within the front doors of the hospital is a huge atrium that climbs through all ten floors of the structure and terminates in a windowed ceiling. Floating walkways crisscross above their heads, forming a wheel spoke pattern. Viktor gazes upwards as Yura wheels him across the atrium and speaks to a nurse stationed at a large, circular desk. She directs them towards an elevator, which they take to the seventh floor—a level that is labeled “Hospice and Twilight Monitoring” on the directory. The elevator deposits them into a quiet hallway, where a series of nurses are working behind a desk. Behind them, some sort of massive control board lists statistics for every room on the floor—a patient name, a timer, and the name of a twilight town.

A petite nurse with her long, straight hair tied in a tight and high ponytail stands up from her station when she sees them and says, “You must be Mister Nikiforov and Mister Plisetsky. I’m Fumiya Makino. We spoke over the phone.”

“Ah, yes,” says Viktor, and bows his head back to her when she bends over slightly to greet him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“You as well, sir,” she says. “I’m sorry it’s under these circumstances.”

Viktor almost smiles. “It’s alright.”

“They’re waiting in the room,” she says after a moment. Viktor hears Yura’s hands tighten on the handles of his wheelchair. “We were told when your flight touched down, so they’re expecting you.”

“Thank you,” says Viktor. “For all the strings you had to pull to allow this. I’m sure that this was…a rather unorthodox way of doing things.”

The nurse smiles. It’s the smile of someone who has seen some incredibly unfortunate things, and has still managed to remain a good and kind person through it all. She seems to consider her words carefully before she speaks them, but eventually says, “Until very recently, Mister Nikiforov, death only brought sadness. I’m glad that something like this has happened. I hope it starts happening more often. I was glad to help.” She turns away at that and leads them down through the hall until they reach a small, private room at the far end of one hall before it ends in a row of windows. Nurse Makino knocks on the door and announces herself in Japanese before pushing it open.

Three people sit inside the room, not including the figure laying on the bed. Yura wheels Viktor in the door and the first person he sees is a woman whose face reminds him so strongly of Yuuri that it almost takes his breath away. They share eyes, a nose, and a mouth. She regards him from the opposite side of the bed, dark eyes blinking at him in the dim light of the room. She looks to be in her early thirties. Viktor knows that this must be Yuuri’s sister.

With her are, of course, Yuuri’s parents. They are both somewhere in the area of twenty years his junior. For a moment, Viktor’s resolve wavers.

Then, in that moment of complete stillness, Hiroko Katsuki smiles at him. He’s startled by it for how little he expected it. He thought that perhaps this would come down to some kind of grudging acknowledgement, or a calm discomfort. But Hiroko Katsuki smiles at him.

“Viktor,” she says, like she’s known him all his life. “Please, come in. It’s so good to finally meet you.”

Viktor smiles, pleased but a little bemused. “Finally…?”

“We feel like we’ve known you for years,” says Yuuri’s father. He has a genial face, like he’s spent a generous portion of his life smiling. The signs of stress are on it—they would be on the face of anybody about to lose a child. But his smile is still easy. “Yuuri has been a fan of yours since he was a child.”

Viktor forces back the grimace trying to surface on his face.

Behind him, Yura clears his throat and Viktor shifts, gestures back towards him. “I’m sorry, I’m being rude. This is Yuri Plisetsky, my…” He considers what to say for a moment. “My brother, if not by blood.”

Yura and the Katsukis exchange handshakes and bows and pleased-to-meet-you’s. Viktor is wheeled into the room and around to the other side of the bed to sit beside Yuuri’s sister, who speaks few words but makes up for it with a gaze so intelligent and observant that it could write entire novels. Yura makes a swift exit after locking the wheels of Viktor’s chair in place. Viktor knew he would; the kind of conversation that has to take place now is something that Yura, with his reticent nature, would feel incredibly uncomfortable bearing witness to.

On the bed, Yuuri breathes. He’s flat on his back with one pillow behind his head, the sheets pulled up to his chest and his arms straight at his sides. His hair is longer and his skin more ashen than how he appears in Hasetsu. He’s also thinner, more drawn. There are hollows below his cheekbones and eyes. On his right temple, the device that hooks consciousness up to the twilight town system whirs very quietly. When Yuuri dies, his consciousness will be stored in that little device. It’s the size of a thumbnail, and it will hold the entire essence of Yuuri Katsuki.

“Are you alright?” Mari Katsuki asks him after a moment. He glances at her, slightly startled. It’s the first time she’s spoken directly to him. She points to her own cheek. “You’re crying.”

Viktor swipes a thumb under his eye, surprised to find moisture there only because he thought he was reigning it in a little better than that. He sniffs several times to clear the wateriness from his voice. “Yes, I’m alright. I just wasn’t prepared for how…still he would be.”

Mari’s eyes drop onto her brother, and she nods. “I know. Sometimes I check his pulse to remind myself that he isn’t dead.”

An uneasy silence settles over the room after she says this. Viktor doesn’t know if it’s due to the words spoken, or the presence of so many people who have never met before congregated under strange circumstances. It hovers over the room for a long while until Viktor realizes that he will have to be the one to initiate what’s to happen, and abruptly begins to speak.

“I don’t know how much you’ve been told about…the situation,” he says, gripping tight onto the armrest of his wheelchair. “I don’t know how often they allow you to speak to—to Yuuri on the combox, or if he’s told you the situation during those conversations. I’ll tell you the whole story if you like, but the short version is…I’ve fallen in love with your son.” Hiroko and Toshiya’s faces barely move. Mari, next to him, is entirely inscrutable in a way that he is very much not used to. This family is a product of an entirely different culture from his own and although he’s learned how to be conscious of the difference in his interactions with Yuuri, it’s still difficult to navigate a conversation with people he hardly knows anything about. He waits a moment for any sort of latent or forestalled reaction, then stumbles blindly onward. “I understand that this is probably—probably very, um, this probably isn’t—” He breathes, and fists a hand into his pantleg to ground himself. “I understand if that upsets you. You have every right to be angry. The age difference alone, not to mention the—other circumstances. I would entirely understand if you—”

“We aren’t upset,” says Hiroko, and then spends a moment having what would appear to be an entire conversation with her husband using only blinks and eyebrows. In those five or so seconds, they seem to come to some kind of consensus. She turns back to him and says, “I speak to Yuuri over the combox almost every day. He told me the day he met you. I wasn’t even shocked. I’d always figured something like that would happen.”

Viktor frowns, bemused. “How could you have?” He and Yuuri grew up on separate continents fifty years apart. There is absolutely nothing about their given circumstances that would bring a person to such a conclusion.

“You’ve been part of his life for so long,” says Hiroko. “You were…the ideal that he compared himself to. You affected his life in so many different ways. I don’t believe it’s an accident when someone influences someone else’s life that way. I always believed that he was meant to influence you, too, in some way. I thought he might become your student, and that’s why figure skating became such a huge part of his life. Because it was meant to lead him to you so that you could…help each other in some capacity.” Hiroko’s lips curve up in something like a smile. It’s an almost bashful expression. “I’m sorry. This is something I’ve given a lot of thought to, but I’ve never had to say it out loud.”

“No, you’re doing fine,” Viktor whispers. He has to swallow a lump in his throat to get the words out.

Hiroko continues, “His injury happened shortly after your diagnosis. It was a freak accident; his head hit the ice in just the right way—” She clears her throat, and shakes her head. “The doctors told us that there was very little chance of him ever waking up. Too much swelling, they said. But he was still in there somewhere. When we decided to put him on the system, the way I consoled myself was by thinking… _maybe he’ll meet Viktor Nikiforov in a twilight town somewhere. Maybe it was always meant to happen this way_.”

“Yuuri said something very similar to me recently,” Viktor murmurs. Hiroko smiles, and Viktor lets himself settle back into his chair with relief. It has, at least, not gone nearly as badly as he thought it would. His arms and legs and neck feel heavy with the constant pain of his illness, and part of him knows it won’t be long now. He’s talking to the Katsukis on borrowed time. Time that has, perhaps, been given to him for this specific purpose.

“I had no idea about the…circumstances surrounding Yuuri’s injury,” Viktor tells them. “All I new was that he was…like me. That he didn’t have anybody on the system with him. That he was alone. If I had known that he was…”

“Younger?” suggests Toshiya Katsuki. His tone is a genuine, nonjudgmental one.

“Yes,” Viktor breathes out on a sigh. “If I had known he _wasn’t_ like me, that he wasn’t an old man waiting to die—”

“But what does it matter?” says Toshiya. “The appeal of those places is that…you’re young and healthy forever. You couldn’t have known. And what will it matter, in years and years, that you had fifty more years in the real world than he did?”

“Yuuri had an old soul,” Mari says, quietly. Viktor looks at her, but she’s looking at Yuuri—he doesn’t think her eyes have left him this whole time. “You could look at his eyes and wonder how much that soul had really seen.”

Her use of the past tense doesn’t escape Viktor’s notice.

“Thank you,” Viktor whispers. “Thank you all for being so understanding. I have something I’d like to…ask of you. But first I need to talk to him.”

* * *

Viktor finds himself on the beach, not far from where he was uploaded that first time. It’s daylight out, the bright sun of afternoon hovering overhead in an echo of the time of day in the real Japan that Viktor had just come from. In the near distance, Yuuri is sitting on a low seawall. The perpetual springtime of Hasetsu is cool, but not unpleasantly so—Viktor enjoys the breeze in his hair. In the real world, it’s a unfamiliar sensation. He has no hair to be breezed through. Age and medication have taken it from him.

He crosses the beach, thinking himself barefoot and feeling the fine, smooth grains of sand slide between his toes. Makkachin shoots out from somewhere behind him and bounds up to Yuuri, who looks up, surprised. He falls back when Makkachin runs into him, and Viktor can hear his laughter over the sound of the waves crashing.

“Hi,” Yuuri breathes when Viktor is close enough to hear him. Makkachin paws at his lap until Yuuri lifts his arm for him to burrow under. Viktor and Yuuri blink at each other for a long moment until Yuuri says, “You’re here. I didn’t think…part of me didn’t think you were coming back.”

“I think I’ll always come back to you,” Viktor murmurs. He sits down on the other side of Makkachin from Yuuri, allowing him that buffer in case he needs it. Glancing out towards the sea, Viktor murmurs, “I’ve never seen it during the day. It’s beautiful.” Pristine, clean-smelling shoreline as far as the eye can see. The lack of other people or even footprints aside from his own fresh ones gives the sensation that they might just be the only two people in the world.

“It is,” Yuuri whispers. He’s looking down, playing with Makkachin’s ears the way Viktor himself does when he wants something to do with his hands, or else doesn’t know how to make eye contact. Makkachin, as always, is content that way—he closes his eyes and leans his head towards Yuuri’s hand. “When I was first put on the system, they gave me a couple of options off the bat—there was a city, and a mountainside town. There’s a person whose job it is to consult with you and find the best match—”

“That was my experience as well,” says Viktor, and has to bite his lip in an attempt to push back the smile that wants to surface—the poor woman assigned to him from Twilight Services suffered through three meetings’ worth of Viktor being ornery before they settled upon Hasetsu.

“It’s a bit complicated when you’re not…um, awake,” Yuuri continues. “They have to put you on the combox and before you choose a town, it’s just—blackness. You can hear whoever is speaking into the combox but you can’t see, and you can’t—you can’t feel. It’s scary, in a way.”

“I can imagine,” Viktor whispers.

“I thought I was dead at first,” Yuuri says. His hand on Makkachin’s head is now still. “I always sort of imagined that that’s what death would be like. Floating in darkness. Alone. Forever.”

Viktor, who struggled on and off with Orthodoxy his whole life—sometimes praying so hard and so ardently that he could almost _feel_ God’s presence, and yet going vast swaths of time, years and years, without stepping foot in a church—doesn’t exactly know what to say to that. He puts his hand on Yuuri’s and tries to convey through that touch that he is listening, and he understands.

“Anyway, they showed me the options,” Yuuri says. “The city was nice, but…big. I lived in Detroit for several years when I was younger and I just never got used to how big and…complex it was. The mountainside town was beautiful, but cold. When they dropped me here, I knew…I knew right away. It had to be this place. It felt like home. It _smelled_ like home.”

Viktor smiles then, despite himself. He and Yuuri had such different motives for choosing Hasetsu. Viktor wanted anything other than a place that reminded him of home. Anything that wasn’t cold, and tall buildings, and the certain European detachedness. Anything that didn’t remind him of the last seventy years of loneliness, neglecting life and love for success in the hopes that he would _feel_ something eventually.

“I wish I could have seen it,” Viktor says. “Karatsu. In real life. But I don’t think I’d survive the trip. I barely survived the one to Fukuoka.”

Yuuri goes rigid. His hand twitches under Viktor’s, but doesn’t pull away—his head turns slowly, his eyes big. He says, “You…went to Fukuoka?”

“I’m there now,” Viktor whispers. “Sitting next to you. I met your parents and your sister. They’re good people, Yuuri. And you’re—”

“In a coma,” Yuuri whispers. “I look like a _corpse_.”

Viktor considers a lie, but can’t.

“Yes,” he whispers. “And I understand. I understand what you meant when you said—you couldn’t do it anymore. It’s for your family, isn’t it? You don’t want them to watch you lie in a bed for the rest of your life.”

Yuuri swallows hard, eyes shining. Viktor traces a thumb over the back of his hand, slow and gentle.

“It would be like going to my funeral, every day,” Yuuri says as a tear breaks free and slides slowly down his cheek. “I can’t put them through that. I think they have this sense of false hope, that maybe if I have enough time, I’ll—” He sighs, shakes his head. Viktor wipes away the tear and smudges it onto his own pantleg. When the pad of his thumb touches Yuuri’s cheek, Yuuri looks at him. The emotion in Yuuri’s eyes then is so complex that it must span the entire human range of feeling. It is sadness—so much sadness. And anger, and resignation. But also love, relief, determination. “I’m broken, and I can feel it. I can’t explain it, but it’s something I _know_. And I’m ready. I understand what’s going to happen to me now, and I’m ready. My family has each other. They won’t be alone. And I—”

“You’ll have me,” Viktor says with determination of his own. “If you’ll have me, I’ll be there.” He slid down onto the sand, one knee taken in an unavoidable cliché, and takes Yuuri’s hand. “This is complicated and I still don’t always know what I’m doing with you, but I know I love you, and I want you to marry me.” Yuuri’s breath stutters and his eyes go wide, but Viktor plows on, knowing that if he doesn’t get it all out now, he never will. “I want you to marry me because I want it to be on my gravestone that I died your husband. And maybe, someday, if someone is walking through Karatsu, they’ll put a flower on our grave.”

“Viktor,” Yuuri whispers. He presses their foreheads together. “ _Viktor._ What do I say.”

“Say yes,” Viktor murmurs.

“Yes,” Yuuri says immediately. His eyes are closed, but Viktor doesn’t know it—because his are as well. “Yes. I want—I’ll be happy with that. With marrying you being the last thing I do before I die.”

Viktor smiles, but he feels tears gather under his closed eyelids. He finds Yuuri’s hands in his lap, squeezes hard. “I wish that we’d been born at the same time. I wish we’d met fifty years ago, because then maybe we could have gotten married in a church and I could have danced with you. I wish we could have had all our lives together. And maybe—maybe, in another world, we did. Maybe we met when we were young and we had…years and years together. Maybe we saved each other.”

Yuuri’s hands turn over and grab Viktor’s, squeezing back.

“You saved me,” Yuuri whispers to him. “Before I ever met you, you saved me.” He takes Viktor’s hand off his face, kisses his fingers. His tears wet his face as Viktor feels his own soak down into the collar of his shirt. “And it doesn’t end here, Viktor. It doesn’t. Death isn’t the end anymore. Maybe it never was, but that doesn’t matter. I’m not scared anymore. I know what’s going to happen and—and it’s going to be you, right? It’s going to be you. We’ll have all the time in the world.”

“Yes,” says Viktor, and it comes out as a sob, but he doesn’t have any care. He pulls Yuuri down with him, and they cling to each other in the sand, wind whipping their hair. “Yes! Eternity if that’s what you want.”

“Yes,” Yuuri whispers back. “That’s what I want.”

* * *

The hospital chaplain performs a nondenominational ceremony. It is not the way Viktor ever thought he would get married in those idle moments, few and far between, when he considered it as a young man. He supposed he would do it in a church, in a tux, and it would be a proper Orthodox ceremony. He supposed it would be before both of his parents and Yakov died. He always imagined them being there, anyway. By the time they died, he was beyond that point in his life when he laid in a quiet and cold bed and thought about that sort of thing.

He never thought that his wedding would have such an air of melancholy. He certainly never thought that it would take place in a hospital hours before his death, or that only four people, three of them almost perfect strangers, would be the sole witnesses. Most of all, he never imaged that the sight of his hand on his soon-to-be husband’s would be uncomfortable. Yuuri’s hand is smooth and cool and ashen, almost corpse-stiff from not being used for so very long. His own is darkened and spotted with age, wrinkled, gnarled. They don’t have rings.

After this, instead of cutting a cake or drinking champagne, a nurse and a doctor enter and administer a large syringe full of lurid chartreuse medication. The nurse, who is the same one who showed Viktor to this room less than an hour ago, informs them that Yuuri will feel no pain—he will simply slip away, and wake up in Hasetsu in the morning.

“You can talk to him as he goes,” she murmurs, as she monitors his vitals. “He’s on the combox still, so he can hear you.”

Nobody really speaks up until, with only the slightest waver in her voice, Hiroko Katsuki murmurs, “It’s alright. We’ll see each other again.”

Viktor jerks his head away from the rest of the room so that nobody sees the tears cascading without control down his cheeks. There is silence until Yuuri’s heart monitor beeps out the flatline. The entire room seems to exhale as one. The doctor pronounces.

“Thank you,” Viktor whispers. “For letting me…be part of this. For everything.”

“You’re welcome,” says Hiroko. Her eyes haven’t left her son. They are red and shimmering, but as Viktor watches, she smiles. It’s small and melancholy, and it really is not born of any sort of joy or happiness, but Viktor understands why it’s there.

“Mister Nikiforov,” says the nurse, turning to him after helping the doctor remove Yuuri from his various monitors and laying the bed flat. The stark white sheet of his bedding has been pulled up over his face. “We have a bed for you, if you’d like to rest as you pass over. Or, if you’d like, I can call the orderlies to take you outside. We have a garden, and it’s very peaceful. A lot of people choose to pass over there.”

Viktor feels a smile that echoes Hiroko Katsuki’s crawl onto his face. If he ever thought he wouldn’t be asked how he wanted to die, he never considered that the question would be posed so kindly.

“Is there a cherry blossom tree in that garden?” he murmurs.

“Yes,” says the nurse, “But…this time of year, there aren’t any flowers.”

“That’s alright,” he whispers. “And don’t bother the orderlies, dear. Yura can take me there.”

The garden is nestled into a courtyard created by the two wings of the hospital. The buildings block the wind chill and heat lamps mounted overhead keep the temperature comfortable, even in fall. Yura wheels him underneath the dying wine-colored leaves of a cherry blossom tree and Viktor tilts his head back to gaze upwards, through the leaves and branches, for his last glance of real blue sky.

“My will is in the safe behind the shoe rack in my bedroom,” Viktor tells Yura. “Take it to my lawyer. I’ve given everything to you. I’d like for you to give some of the money to the Katsukis. I know you’ll do right by them. The rest is yours; the house and everything in it. All I ask is that you use it like it was built to be used. It’s been too long since that house saw happiness.”

Yura comes around to the front of his wheelchair, crouches there and sets his hands on Viktor’s knees. He looks at once like the man he’s become and the child Viktor once knew him as, two faces overlayed upon each other until they form once image. Viktor’s muscles and bones must know that their use will soon come to an end—it takes the last of his strength to place his hand on Yura’s head.

“When is Otabek’s flight coming in?” he asks.

“Tomorrow,” Yura whispers, a certain inelegant nasal quality to his voice. The pink rims of his eyes yield fat tears that slide quickly down his cheeks and underneath his chin. “He’s getting on a plane in LA this afternoon. He’ll be in Tokyo in the morning.”

“Good,” Viktor murmurs. “Good. Are you upset with me, Yurochka?”

“Why would I be upset with you?”

“Because I’m being buried in a different country on a whim.”

Yura barks out a laugh and shakes his head. “God, Viktor. That is so like you. You forget something I’ve told you twenty times but you remember a stupid thing I said _once_ when I was frustrated. Jesus Christ.” He swipes a thumb underneath his eye. “No. No, I’m not mad at you. I think I understand. At least a little. I think if it were me in this situation, you would want me to do exactly this. So I’m—yeah, I’m not angry. I spent too much of your life being angry at you.”

Viktor nods and slides his hand off Yura’s head, pats his cheek and smiles. Yura straightens up and sits on an adjacent bench, close enough that Viktor can still hear his slow and even breaths, the occasional hitch in an inhale. It takes several minutes for the nurse to arrive, with a doctor—a different one from earlier—in tow. Another person drifts into the courtyard with them. It’s Mari Katsuki, her face pinkened and her eyes wet. She leans down beside Yura and murmurs something to him, and he nods. She turns to Viktor.

“Take care of him, please,” she says, picking up his hand from the armrest of his wheelchair and holding it between both of hers. “He’s strong, and smart, but he doesn’t always say what he’s thinking. You have to be patient with him.”

“I will,” Viktor murmurs, and tries to squeeze her hand. On the other arm, the nurse swaps alcohol around his forearm and begins the process of finding a vein to insert the IV into.

“Thank you,” Mari whispers. She bows, slightly at the waist, and squeezes his hand back. “I’m glad that—that someone like you will be with him. I’m glad he’ll have someone. Will you tell him that I’ll be thinking of him? Tell him that…I promise I’ll never forget him. I’ll visit when I can. It won’t be like he’s dead, just…gone away.” Her eyes are unfixed, staring at the ground, somewhere past what’s real and into something only she can see. A memory, or a feeling. One more tear slides down her face. “I’ll think of him every day. Tell him that.”

“I will,” Viktor whispers.

“Little poke,” says the nurse, as she inserts the IV. Viktor barely feels it. As the nurse prepares the syringe, Yura stands up and comes to stand beside Viktor on his other side. Mari Katsuki steps back slightly in deference to him, but she stays.

“The process of downloading your full consciousness onto the system is a longer one than just the temporary visitation you’ve been experiencing until now,” the nurse tells him, as she fixes the twilight monitor to the side of his forehead, where it begins to whir. It usually takes about fifteen minutes for the quiet whirring and the gentle sleep medications to put Viktor to sleep. Today, he won’t need either of those things. “The module on your head will automatically adopt your consciousness to its internal memory when you die. Afterwards, it’ll be transported to the main hub, where it will be integrated into the mother system. Once you’re uploaded onto the mother system, that’s when you’ll wake up.”

“Will I dream?” Viktor murmurs.

The nurse tilts her head, the lines of her mouth and eyebrows soft. “I don’t know,” she says eventually, and then takes the cap off of the injection port of the IV. Yura’s hand lands on Viktor’s wrist as she depresses the plunger of the syringe.

“I’ll be seeing you, old man,” he says, and Viktor smiles until he can no longer hold his head up.

* * *

Yuuri is the first thing Viktor sees on the first morning of his new life.

The top of his head, to be exact. It’s on Viktor’s chest, and his slightly too-long hair tickles Viktor’s collarbones. They are both fully clothed and laying above the blankets of Yuuri’s bed in the Onsen. Morning-bright light peaks around the edges of the blinds above the bed.

Yuuri, who stirs when Viktor’s chest expands on the waking inhale, tilts his head up. His dark eyes are awake, not like he’s just woken up. Viktor immediately has the ridiculous urge to count each eyelash. Everything seems stark, like there’s been a thin film over his sense for the past ever so long, and now that it’s gone he can see and hear clearly for the first time in a very long time.

“I feel so heavy,” he croaks at last, after trying and failing to come up with something better to say. He feels like it should be something better, considering that these are his first words in a new world. You can’t really pick the first words out of your mouth as a baby, and something about this experience makes him want to say something profound, but at the moment all he can think about is the heaviness in his limbs, making it hard to lift a hand even to put it around Yuuri’s shoulders, where he wants it.

“I know,” Yuuri murmurs. “It goes away after a little while. It’s the difference in the permanent system. Everything is a little more…clear. You don’t have a body or brain to muddle things. You’re pure thought.”

Viktor looks down at his body, which feels very real; and slides his fingers across the soft sheets on Yuuri’s bed, which also feels very real; and finally settles a hand near Yuuri’s head, on a strand of his hair, which feels just as real in his place as it had before.

“I’m not sure that’s a comforting thought,” Viktor whispers. Eventually, slowly, he sits up. Yuuri goes with him until they’re sitting, facing each other on the bed. Yuuri has his legs folded under himself and his hands in his lap, wearing a pair of jeans and a sweater that is determinedly sliding itself off his left shoulder. Viktor isn’t entirely sure what he’s wearing, but he thinks it must be the clothes he’s worn almost every other time he’s been in Hasetsu. He figures he should start compiling a wardrobe, now. He can’t continue treating this place like an impermanent simulation now that he lives here.

“How long have you been awake?” Viktor asks. It can’t have been much longer than himself. They passed over within an hour of each other.

“Awhile,” Yuuri murmurs. “I think the system had less to deal with, for me. Not so many memories.”

Viktor slowly nods, glances around the room. He can’t quite look at Yuuri yet, for reasons that aren’t clear even to himself. “Why…why am I here?” At the foot of the bed, Makkachin slumbers.

“I’m not sure,” Yuuri says. “I think that the technicians might have assumed they should put us down in the same place, since we’re…”

“Married,” Viktor whispers. He turns to Yuuri and slides a hand across the expanse of sheet separating them, settling it over Yuuri’s leg. “We’re married now, aren’t we?”

Yuuri takes his hand and holds it there in his lap, between both of his. “You say that like it makes you sad.”

“It does, in a way,” Viktor says. “Because we’re also dead.”

Yuuri spends a moment gazing down at Viktor’s palm, which he has splayed out over his lap and is now tracing, softly, with the pad of his right pointer finger. Viktor, whose gaze is settled somewhere indistinct over Yuuri’s shoulder, can’t see the expression on his face—and wouldn’t be at a vantage point to see it even if he was looking straight at him. The stillness passes naturally, and its end is signaled by Yuuri’s back straightening and his hand stretching up between them.

“I have something for you,” he murmurs, as he opens his hand to reveal a pair of golden rings in the center of his palm. “It’s just something I thought of. We can make different ones, or we don’t even have to—”

Viktor takes a ring, the slightly bigger of the two, and holds it close to his face. On the outside, it’s a plain golden band, cool to the touch. Inside, it’s been engraved with half of a snowflake.

“When you hold them together…” Yuuri whispers, and settles his ring atop Viktor’s, completing the snowflake.

“Oh,” Viktor whispers, and finally looks up into Yuuri’s face. There is the same melancholy that Viktor feels—it’s there in the tilt of Yuuri’s mouth and the low altitude of his eyelids. Carefully, he takes Yuuri’s ring and slides it onto his finger for him, and kisses the finger he puts it on.

“The right hand,” Viktor murmurs to him. “That’s the hand we put it on in Russia.”

Yuuri, all at once, is incredibly close. He presses their faces together, their open mouths colliding messily. Viktor feels their teeth clack together. His entire body curls into Yuuri’s instinctively, trying to hide him and be hidden at the same time. In the cacophony of their moving bodies, Yuuri finds Viktor’s hand and returns the favor, sliding the ring down onto Viktor’s right ring finger.

“I love you,” Yuuri tells him, noses pressed hard together, foreheads mashed against each other, bones and flesh that mind not even really exist anymore press together so close that they might be one person. “God, I—”

Viktor whines against his mouth and pulls him down. He can’t talk. Doesn’t want to talk.

Yuuri follows his pulling grasp, and Viktor realizes that maybe, in this moment, they don’t _need_ to talk.

* * *

The second awakening of the morning is more pleasant than the first.

Viktor comes out of his doze as the bed next to him moves. He rolls towards the absence of warmth and peers over the peak of a pillow. Yuuri is in profile, pulling a pair of jeans up over his naked hips. Everything still feels a little strange, but Viktor doesn’t really know if it’s actually the feeling of this place, or if it’s his own preoccupation with how he thinks he _should_ feel. He also doesn’t know if it’s something that will fade over time, but it’s not a bad feeling. It feels a little bit like New Year’s morning; like the world is somehow new.

It takes a moment, but Yuuri turns around and sees him looking. He smiles and picks his shirt from earlier up off the floor, crosses the room on quiet feet. He crouches down beside Viktor and murmurs, “Will you come with me to the rink? I want to show you something.”

“Alright,” Viktor whispers back, and stretches over the soft sheets. Yuuri kisses him, slow and luxurious, then stands up and slips out of the room. Viktor slides out of bed and, for the first time in this place, actually gets dressed instead of just thinking his clothes onto his back.

They walk to the rink together, Makkachin trailing behind them. It’s a trek that Viktor must have made hundreds of times before over the months he’s been coming to Hasetsu, but it’s different in the light of day, with Yuuri walking beside him. They don’t hold hands, or link arms, but the brush of their shoulders sends a similar sensation of warmth through Viktor. Cherry blossoms fall lazily onto their heads and onto Makkachin’s fur, where Viktor will have to brush them off. Viktor imagines years and years of this. Of these eternal petals always falling, but never running out.

Behind the skate rental desk, there is Yuuko, as always. She leans her head on her hands as they come in, and something in her eyes tells Viktor that she knows. Likely, it’s because she’s an impression, an extension of the system. But part of Viktor also thinks that maybe she can _tell_. Maybe there is something about her—Takeshi’s memories of the real Yuuko, all of his love for her imbued onto the system and then onto the impression—that allows her to think like a person, and she understands in that inherent way that only a person can.

Viktor sees all of this on her face, but she only says, “Congratulations.”

Yuuri blinks at her, and Viktor feels a frown tug down on his face.

_For dying?_ He almost asks.

“Your rings,” she says after a moment, gesturing. “They’re wedding rings, right?”

“Yes,” Yuuri says immediately, as his hand snaps instinctively to his ring. “Yes, we…yes.”

Yuuko smiles. “I’m happy for you.”

“Thank you,” Yuuri murmurs softly. Viktor gets the feeling that he’s not just thanking her for her words.

They continue into the rink, where Yuuri squeezes his arm and then continues into some unseen part of the rink, maybe a locker room area where Viktor has never been. Viktor sits on the lowest level of the bleachers with Makkachin and waits for him.

When he comes out, it’s in a dark blue costume that resembles a tux jacket and pants. There are sheer cutouts on the waist, and shimmering glitter along the shoulders and down the lapels that sent a rainbow of color twinkling off of him. He crosses to Viktor and leans against the boards, waiting for him.

“I’m not good at choreography,” Yuuri tells him, and Viktor’s hands cover his on the top of the boards. “I’ve never really done it before. But, um, I’ve been working on something the past few months, and…I want you to see it.”

“Alright,” Viktor whispers. He squeezes Yuuri’s hands and lets them go, but Yuuri flips his own hands over and grips Viktor’s. He pitches forward, pressing their heads together hard and fast enough to almost hurt. With his eyes open and staring, he’s so close that all Viktor can see is pools of cinnamon sugar.

“Don’t take your eyes off me,” he whispers, and unlike the last time he said it—commanding and intense—he says it in a way that is almost desperate. A plea.

“Okay,” Viktor promises, voice shaky. “Okay.”

He turns away. As he skates toward center ice, Viktor presses a hand to his forehead, where he can still feel the warmth of Yuuri’s face. He stays rooted to the spot, as the lights in the rink dim themselves and Yuuri takes his beginning pose. Then, quietly, the music starts. A beautiful, lilting piano melody. The opening step sequence is reminiscent of ballet. Simple, but seamlessly executed. The lines of his body are beautiful; that poetry put into form that first enchanted Viktor all those months ago. The step sequence is punctuated by a quad-toe-double-toe, which he lands flawlessly. Viktor’s hands tighten into ardent fists.

The music seems to come from within him. Viktor supposes that it can, in this place. It seems to flow directly from his heart, the center of him where all of his momentum comes from. The story it tells is visible in Yuuri’s movements. The years of straining, reaching. The moments of loneliness so profound that it felt like being the only person on the planet. Failure and success and crashing, horrible failure. Viktor’s breath catches on the triple axel, and on the perfect and taut line of Yuuri’s back and leg on a camel spin.

Emotions that Viktor has only ever felt one other time in his life, during those moments of watching Yuuri perform _Eros_ resurface, but they are different. Eros was raw sensuality, and Viktor felt it deep in his bones, in some primal part of him triggered by the flick of the skirt and the shape of Yuuri’s thighs. This is a gentling of those feelings, though no less poignant—Viktor feels the new weight of Yuuri’s ring on his finger and sees the reaching of Yuuri’s arms, his feet so light on the ice that he looks like he’s flying, and those feelings amass to swell his heart until he almost can’t stand it. It gathers in his eyes and throat, stinging.

Then, a violin enters in counterpoint to the piano and Viktor knows, somehow, that it’s him. It’s a careful, tender, circling melody that lurks around the piano until harmonizing.

As the climactic keychange rises and Yuuri hurdles through the final step sequence, Viktor has a moment to recognize that he’s finally allowed himself to be buoyed by the not-quite-reality of this place—his feet touch ice and his lungs breathe air but he stays in the air just a little longer than he should, like time has almost slowed down for just a second. This is the thought on Viktor’s mind when he realizes that Yuuri is entering into his final jump—and that is a flip.

His breath is in his throat, caught, as he watches Yuuri jump. He counts the rotations—One. Two. Three.

Four.

Viktor’s hand claps over his mouth, overcome. Tears spill over his cheeks. He releases two wracking sobs against his palm. He has to; the emotion doesn’t have anywhere else to go. It’s a lifetime of pain sliding down his face like cleansing rain. It’s the love he holds in his heart for this man who he never would have met if they had not both died before their time.

Yuuri’s final pose on the ice is sweet and still, a hand over the heart and a pointed gesture, and Viktor knows that it is pointing at him—or that it would be, had he not immediately begun running the moment Yuuri’s skates began to still. When Yuuri realizes that the blur on the rinkside is Viktor, he runs too. He has further to travel, but skates are faster than feet, and they reach the door at the same time.

Viktor, unheeding of anything but _Yuuri,_ throws himself. Yuuri catches him as much as he can, arms going around his waist wildly, but they go down—and Viktor cradles the back of Yuuri’s head, where it had once before met hard ice. When Yuuri looks up at Viktor, he is completely unafraid.

Their landing is soft. Viktor decides, in that moment, that he will stop trying to make sense of everything in this world. He kisses his husband.

“Were you surprised?” Yuuri whispers. “I wanted to surprise you the way you’ve always surprised me. The way you surprised me that first night.” He wipes away Viktor’s tears.

“I’m _amazed_ ,” Viktor whispers. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop being amazed by you.”

Yuuri’s hand is warm on his cheek, thumb pressed between cheek and nose.

“I didn’t think you were real at first,” Yuuri tells him then, with the air of a secret he’s been keeping for a long time. “Sometimes I still don’t know if I made you up. But I can touch you—and feel you—and…I don’t think…I don’t think it really matters. We’re dead, so does it matter?”

Viktor sits up and pulls Yuuri up with him, and they sit on an ice rink that doesn’t feel cold under their legs, isn’t melting into their clothes. Yuuri’s hands are warm and his breath comes easy, despite the program he just skated. Viktor’s long-lost dog watches on. There is a ring on Viktor’s finger that holds the significance of a lifetime, despite never really existing when Viktor was alive.

Someday, this will all end. Either because of human error or because of the inevitable end of the world. It’s a program based in technology and someday, it will collapse. On that day, the human race will truly find out if there is a God—and if that God is merciful. But in the moment, and for the far, far foreseeable future—until a future so far that one might even call it _eternity_ , Viktor has life and love.

“No,” Viktor whispers, his fingers in Yuuri’s hair. “No, it really doesn’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOOOO. Alright, it's done. I really really hope that everybody enjoyed this story! Writing it felt like birthing a child. It took a lot of time and a lot of effort and it's inspired by a lot of my own personal pain, but I hope that the ending was good for all of you--and I hope that it was a story worth telling. 
> 
> As always, I am LavenderProse on Ao3. I'm in a bit of a Fandom Transitional Space right now so you might be finding a Little Bit of Everything on that blog at the moment, but if you wanna come visit and check it out, please do so! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading. I love you all and I hope that your night, your week, and the rest of your lives are good and happy.


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